United States v. Christopher Rarick
United States v. Christopher Rarick
Opinion of the Court
OPINION
Christopher Rariek appeals the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress evidence of child pornography found on his smartphone, which was. searched pursuant to a warrant after Rariek .was arrested for obstructing official business and driving with a suspended license. Rariek challenges the particularity of the warrant and the manner in which it was executed. We affirm.
I.
On February 14, 2013, Christopher Rar-ick was stopped by Ashland City Police
Rarick refused to consent to a search of his phone. Lieutenant Joel Icenhour then filed an affidavit for a search warrant. In the affidavit, Icenhour stated that he had good cause to believe that evidence relating to the offense of obstructing official business, a violation of Ohio Revised Code § 2921.31, was likely stored in a digital format on Rarick’s phone, which had been taken from Rarick at the time of his arrest. Icenhour’s affidavit stated that “[t]his belief is based on a traffic stop conducted by Officer Kimberly Mager.” Search Warrant Aff. í, EOF No. 19-1. An Ohio state judge issued a warrant that authorized the search and seizure of, among other things, “[a]ll information within” Rarick’s phone, “including but not limited to machine-readable data, all previously erased data, and any personal communications”; “[a]ny and all electronic data contained in the device’s memory as well as on other internal, external or removable media to include but not necessarily limited to ... images, voice memos, photographs, [and] videos”; and “[a]ll other fruits and instrumentalities of crime at the present time unknown.” Search Warrant 1-2, EOF No. 19-2.
Icenhour then executed the search warrant by connecting Rarick’s phone to a computer that was running Susteen Secure View 3 forensic cell phone data recovery software.
At this point, Icenhour shut off the video and went to tell his chief of police what he had found. After consulting with the prosecutor’s office, they applied for and received a second warrant, this time asserting probable cause to search for evidence of child pornography and several related offenses under Ohio law. Executing the second warrant, Icenhour found numerous pictures and videos containing child pornography, many of which appeared to have been taken with Rarick’s phone. The police then arrested Rarick and applied for and received a third search warrant for his vehicle and residence.
A federal grand jury indicted Rarick on two counts of exploiting children in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2251(a) and one count of possession of child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(5)(B). Arguing, inter alia, that the first search warrant was unconstitutionally broad and had been executed in an unreasonable manner, Rarick moved to suppress all of the evidence found on his smartphone and the fruits obtained from the search. The district court denied his motion. Rarick then pled guilty but preserved his right to appeal the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress. The court ordered Rar-ick incarcerated for concurrent sentences of 188 months on each of the two exploiting-children counts and a concurrent sentence of 120 months on the child-pornography count.
After entry of judgment by the district court, Rarick timely appealed. He argues that the first search warrant failed the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement and that the manner of the search was unreasonable and unconstitutional.
II.
Where the issue on appeal is a district court’s denial of a motion to suppress evidence, we review the district court’s findings of fact for clear error and its legal conclusions de novo. United States v. Quinney, 583 F.3d 891, 893 (6th Cir. 2009). A district court’s determination of the particularity of a search warrant is reviewed de novo. United States v. Richards, 659 F.3d 527, 536 (6th Cir. 2011) (citing United States v. Greene, 250 F.3d 471, 477 (6th Cir. 2001)). We consider the evidence in the light most likely to support the district court’s denial of the motion to suppress. United States v. Pritchett, 749 F.3d 417, 435 (6th Cir. 2014) (quoting United States v. Adams, 583 F.3d 457, 463 (6th Cir. 2009)).
III.
A.
The Fourth Amendment generally requires police to obtain a warrant before searching the digital information stored on
' Rarick does not dispute the existence of probable cause supporting the first search warrant to the extent that the warrant authorized obtaining evidence of his interaction with the police officer outside the Cheap Tobacco store, for which he was charged with obstructing official business. Rather, he argues that the first search warrant was overly broad because it neither specified the particular electronic evidence sought from the phone nor the particular crime to which the evidence was connected. Although it is true that the text of the warrant did not contain that information, “[t]he particularity requirement may be satisfied through the express incorporation or cross-referencing of a supporting affidavit that describes the items to be seized, even though the search warrant contains no such description.” Richards, 659 F.3d at 537 (citing Baranski v. Fifteen Unknown Agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, 452 F.3d 433, 439-40 (6th Cir. 2006) (en banc)). Here, the warrant referred to the supporting affidavit that had been filed by Icenh-our. The first sentence of the warrant was “WHEREAS there has been filed with me an affidavit.” Search Warrant 1. The warrant then stated, referring to the following paragraphs that named the types of data to be searched, “[tjhese are, therefore, to command you” to search Rarick’s cell phone. Search Warrant 1. This language constitutes a sufficient cross-reference of the affidavit. See Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551, 557-58, 124 S.Ct. 1284, 157 L.Ed.2d 1068 (2004).
The question, then, is whether the information contained in the affidavit, to which the warrant referred, was enough to satisfy the particularity requirement. “[T]he degree of specificity required is flexible and will vary depending on the crime involved and the types of items sought.” Greene, 250 F.3d at 477 (quoting United States v. Ables, 167 F.3d 1021, 1033 (6th Cir. 1999)). The description of the things to be seized should, however, be “as specific as the circumstances and the nature of the activity under investigation permit.” Richards, 659 F.3d at 537 (quoting Guest v. Leis, 255 F.3d 325, 336 (6th Cir. 2001)). In the context of searches of electronic devices, while recognizing the inherent risk that -criminals can easily “hide, mislabel, or manipulate files to conceal criminal activity,” we must also take care not to give the Government free rein to essentially do away with the particularity requirement by allowing it to examine
Rarick objects, among other things, to the warrant’s expansive language authorizing the search of “any and all electronic data” and “any and all communications,” and the warrant’s failure to specify the date of the creation of the video at issue. As he sees it, this language swept far more broadly than “the circumstances and the nature of the activity under investigation permit[ted].” See Richards, 659 F.3d at 537 (quoting Leis, 255 F.3d at 336).
In Richards, we held that the search warrant for evidence regarding a child pornography website was not overbroad where it authorized a search beyond the file directory on the server where the evidence was contained. 659 F.3d at 541. There, the broad search of the entire server was necessary because the agents did not know how, where, or in what quantity the evidence would be stored on the server. Id. The warrant in Richards was specific as to what the agents were searching for and limited the items to be seized to the content of the pornographic website, and business records, email correspondence, and other files related to the website. Id. at 535. Here, certain portions of the warrant were not limited to files specific to what the government was searching for — a video or image taken by Rarick on the date and" around the time of his arrest. For instance, the warrant authorized Icenhour to examine “all GPS data such as but not limited to locations, way-points, favorite locations, points of interest and routes of travel.” Search Warrant 1. However, the remedy in this circuit is not suppression of all of the items seized under the warrant, but rather severance of the infirm portions “from the remainder which passes constitutional muster.” United States v. Abboud, 438 F.3d 554, 576 (6th Cir. 2006) (quoting United States v. Blakeney, 942 F.2d 1001, 1027 (6th Cir. 1991)); United States v. Cook, 657 F.2d 730, 735 (5th Cir. 1981) (“[I]t would be harsh medicine indeed if a warrant which was issued on probable cause and which did particularly describe certain items were to be invalidated in toto merely because the affi-ant and the magistrate erred in seeking and permitting a search for other items as well.” (citation omitted)).
B.
Rarick further argues that the manner of the search was unconstitutional because Icenhour did not begin his search by focusing on the places where the evidence was most likely to be. Traditionally, “it is generally left to the discretion of the executing officers to determine the details of how best to proceed with the performance of a search authorized by warrant — subject of course to the general Fourth Amendment protection ‘against unreason
While Rarick would have us declare that, to be reasonable, the search here should have at least been commenced by using a date filter before expanding the search, we will not get involved in the minutiae of determining specifically what methodologies should be taken, but will rather examine whether the search executed under the facts of this case was reasonable. Searching by date may have been one reasonable search methodology, but it was not the only reasonable one. The facts of this case lead us to conclude that the search conducted by Icenhour was executed in a reasonable manner. Though, under certain portions of the warrant, Icenhour was given leave to search virtually the entire contents of Rarick’s phone, the record establishes that he did not do so. Rather, he targeted his search to where he reasonably believed the recording was most likely to be found — among the audio and video files. Icenhour testified that he scrolled through the thumbnails of the files on Rarick’s phone. Though he observed the child pornography photos during this search, he continued to scroll through the files until he found an image of a beige wall that he thought could be the start of the video recorded outside of the Cheap Tobacco store. Rather than continue to search after discovering that this beige wall was a part of a video containing more pornography, he turned off the video and proceeded to get a second warrant. Although the recording could have been found by first searching for data recorded on February 14, 2013, the date of Rarick’s arrest, Icenhour’s approach of searching by scrolling through all of the thumbnails, rather than just those on the date of Rarick’s arrest, and taking care not to closely examine more than the target of the search warrant was not unreasonable.
IV.
For the reasons explained above, we affirm the district court’s denial of Rarick’s motion to suppress.
. The first time Icenhour attempted to execute the warrant, he was thwarted because he did not have the phone's passcode. Icenhour subsequently obtained the passcode from Rar-ick's father, apparently with Rarick’s consent. If Icenhour had been unable to obtain the passcode, he would have sent the phone to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation to be unlocked.
. The dissent urges us to reverse for want of probable cause. However, Rarick has never argued, either in the district court or here, that there was no probable cause to arrest for or search for evidence of a violation of Ohio Revised Code § 2921.31.
Concurring in Part
Judge, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Had we considered this ease as it was framed for us on appeal, it would have led not only to the conclusion that the warrant was overbroad, but also that it lacked probable cause and that no amount of trimming could save it. I therefore respectfully concur in part and dissent in part.
I.
It is true that severing the “infirm portions” of a warrant is an acceptable legal remedy when dealing with an overbroad warrant. But the government never made this argument. Instead, it contended that, even if the warrant were overbroad, suppression would be inappropriate because Icenhour’s search fell within the good faith exception set forth in United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984). Our next step should have been to consider whether the Leon exception applies here. See Richards, 659 F.3d 527, 542 (6th Cir. 2011). A glance at Leon reveals that the good-faith exception does not apply when an officer relies “on a warrant based on an affidavit ‘so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable.’ ” Leon, 468 U.S. at 923, 104 S.Ct. 3405 (quoting Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 611, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 45 L.Ed.2d 416 (1975) (Powell, J., concurring in part)).
The majority was able to avoid discussing good faith, and thus the latent probable cause issue, only by doing the very thing it finds objectionable in this dissent: raising an argument that was not before us. And it seems to me more appropriate to consider an argument that was raised, albeit without much elaboration, than one that was not raised at all.
II.
A review of the record reveals that probable cause was sorely lacking in this case. Officer Icenhour’s affidavit notes that the offense at issue is obstructing official business in violation of Ohio Revised Code § 2921.31. “[A] police officer is expected to tolerate a certain level of un-cooperativeness, especially in a free society in which the citizenry is not obliged to be either blindly or silently obeisant to law enforcement,” and the obstruction must therefore be more than “mere argument.” State v. Stayton, 126 Ohio App.3d 158, 709 N.E.2d 1224, 1227 (1998). Thus, with the exception of fighting words, “a citizen’s verbal assault on a police officer does not, standing alone, constitute criminal conduct.” Id.
Recording the police is of course an “affirmative act,” but it is fully legal in Ohio. See Ohio Rev.Code § 2933.52(B)(4). And there is no indication that Rarick’s recording hampered Officer Mager in any way. Allowing the police to arrest someone for obstructing official business simply because that person was legally recording them goes against the plain language of § 2933.52(B)(4) and raises serious First Amendment concerns. See Am. Civil Liberties Union of Illinois v. Alvarez, 679 F.3d 583, 607 (7th Cir. 2012).
When a warrant lacks probable cause, the applicability of “the [good faith] exception turns on whether a reasonable officer would know that the affidavit failed to establish probable cause.” United States v. Helton, 314 F.3d 812, 824 (6th Cir. 2003). Under Leon, we presume that “officers ... have a reasonable knowledge of what the law prohibits.” Leon, 468 U.S. at 919 n. 20, 104 S.Ct. 3405. “This burden is even greater when the officer executing the warrant prepares the affidavit in support of the warrant, drafts the warrant, and applies for the warrant.” United States v. Watson, 498 F.3d 429, 433 (6th Cir. 2007). Ohio’s obstruction law applies to the workaday interactions of police officers with the public, and its meaning is well settled. Officer Icenhour should have known that this warrant lacked probable cause.
III.
Having reached this conclusion (a conclusion that the majority does not disagree with except on procedural grounds), it is manifest that no amount of trimming can save the warrant. The evidence should have been suppressed. From the majority’s holding to the contrary I respectfully dissent.
. Rarick's statement "I have killed people” was perhaps threatening, but it did not constitute fighting words. See Greene v. Barber, 310 F.3d 889, 896 (6th Cir. 2002) (citing Houston v. Hill, 482 U.S. 451, 462, 107 S.Ct. 2502, 96 L.Ed.2d 398 (1987)).
. That Rarick recorded the interaction appears, if anything, to have helped speed along the arrest, as "Christopher's demeanor changed once he got the phone in record mode” and he was "subsequently arrested.”
Reference
- Full Case Name
- UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Christopher D. RARICK, Defendant-Appellant
- Cited By
- 3 cases
- Status
- Unpublished