United States v. Timothy Carpenter
United States v. Timothy Carpenter
Opinion
This case returns on remand from the Supreme Court. In our prior opinion, the majority held that the Government's warrantless collection of Timothy Ivory Carpenter's cell-site location information (CSLI) did not violate the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court disagreed. The unconstitutionality of the Government's search was not clear until after the Supreme Court reversed our decision, which leads us to the question of whether the FBI agents who obtained Carpenter's CSLI acted in good faith. Because these agents reasonably relied on the Stored Communications Act (SCA), we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.
I. BACKGROUND
A. CSLI and the SCA
We begin with the basics of CSLI and the related legal framework. CSLI refers to the time-stamped location records generated each time a wireless device communicates with a carrier's network by connecting to the nearest antenna, known as a "cell site."
Carpenter v. United States
(
Carpenter II
), --- U.S. ----,
The imminent launch of fifth-generation wireless technology, known as 5G, promises to multiply the number of cell sites in this country. Wireless networks once designed to carry cell phone traffic will soon support an unprecedented number of devices connected across industries, including autonomous vehicles, smart homes, wearable devices, industrial machinery, and drones.
See
Jill C. Gallagher & Michael E. DeVine, Cong. Research Serv., R45485,
Fifth-Generation (5G) Telecommunications Technologies: Issues for Congress
2-6 (2019). To handle all the wireless data transmitted by these new technologies, carriers must greatly increase the number of cell sites nationwide. Verizon, for example, recently estimated that upgrading the nation's wireless infrastructure to prepare for 5G will require "100
*315
times more antenna locations than currently exist," and AT&T projected "that providers will deploy hundreds of thousands of wireless facilities in the next few years alone-equal to or more than the number providers have deployed in total over the last few decades."
In the Matter of Accelerating Wireless Broadband Deployment by Removing Barriers to Infrastructure Inv.
, F.C.C. No. 18-133,
Against the backdrop of this new era of connected devices, § 2703(d) of the SCA-a provision first drafted 25 years ago-permits law enforcement to obtain certain records of a person's wireless communications whenever the government "offers specific and articulable facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe" the records sought "are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation."
See
Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, Pub. L. No. 103-414,
B. Factual and Procedural History
Because we and the Supreme Court summarized the facts of this case in prior decisions,
see
Carpenter II
,
A federal jury convicted Carpenter of robbery and gun charges after he and others committed a string of robberies in Michigan and Ohio between 2010 and 2012. During its investigation, the Government sought court orders under § 2703(d) for Carpenter's CSLI. In response to the Government's applications, two magistrate judges ordered Carpenter's wireless carriers to provide "the locations of cell/site sector (physical addresses) for the target telephones at call origination and at call termination for incoming and outgoing calls." Carpenter II described the scope of the CSLI turned over by Carpenter's carriers:
The first order sought 152 days of cell-site records from MetroPCS, which produced records spanning 127 days. The second order requested seven days of CSLI from Sprint, which produced two days of records covering the period when Carpenter's phone was "roaming" in northeastern Ohio. Altogether the Government obtained 12,898 location points cataloging Carpenter's movements-an average of 101 data points per day.
*316 At trial, the Government used Carpenter's CSLI to create a record of his physical proximity to many of the alleged robberies:
With the cell-site data provided by Carpenter's and Sanders's wireless carriers, [FBI agent Christopher] Hess created maps showing that Carpenter's and Sanders's phones were within a half-mile to two miles of the location of each of the robberies around the time the robberies happened. Hess used MetroPCS call-detail records, for example, to show that Carpenter was within that proximity of a Detroit Radio Shack that was robbed around 10:35 a.m. on December 13, 2010. Specifically, MetroPCS records showed that at 10:24 a.m. Carpenter's phone received a call that lasted about four minutes. At the start and end of the call, Carpenter's phone drew its signal from MetroPCS tower 173, sectors 1 and 2, located southwest of the store and whose signals point north-northeast. After the robbery, Carpenter placed an eight-minute call originating at tower 145, sector 3, located northeast of the store, its signal pointing southwest; when the call ended, Carpenter's phone was receiving its signal from tower 164, sector 1, alongside Interstate 94, north of the Radio Shack. Hess provided similar analysis concerning the locations of Carpenter's and Sanders's phones at the time of a December 18, 2010 robbery in Detroit; a March 4, 2011 robbery in Warren, Ohio; and an April 5, 2011 robbery in Detroit.
Carpenter I
,
A jury convicted Carpenter of Hobbs Act robbery and related gun charges in violation of
C. Carpenter II
Carpenter II
begins by situating the Government's acquisition of Carpenter's CSLI at "the intersection of two lines" of Fourth Amendment precedent.
As for the first line of precedent,
Carpenter II
explained that "when the Government tracks the location of a cell phone it achieves near perfect surveillance, as if it had attached an ankle monitor to the phone's user."
*317
Under the second line of cases, the Court held that the third-party doctrine did not shield the Government's collection of CSLI from Fourth Amendment safeguards. That doctrine originated decades ago, when "few could have imagined a society in which a phone goes wherever its owner goes[.]" Id. at 2217. Nor could prior courts have anticipated the "depth, breadth, and comprehensive reach" of the CSLI used by law enforcement today. Id. at 2223. Because cell phone owners do not, in any "meaningful sense," choose to turn over such a thorough record of their public and private lives, the Court found that the acquisition of Carpenter's CSLI was a Fourth Amendment search regardless of whether the Government obtained the data from a third party. Id. at 2220.
With the Supreme Court's guidance in mind, we reevaluate whether the district court properly permitted the Government to introduce Carpenter's CSLI at trial.
II. ANALYSIS
"When reviewing the denial of a motion to suppress, we will set aside the district court's factual findings only if they are clearly erroneous, but will review de novo the court's conclusions of law."
United States v. Lee
,
Although the Government should have obtained a warrant in this case, we may nevertheless affirm the district court's decision if the Government acquired Carpenter's CSLI in good faith reliance on the SCA. "Though evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment is generally excluded, the Supreme Court has held that the exclusionary rule 'should be modified so as not to bar the admission of evidence seized in reasonable, good faith reliance on a search warrant that is subsequently held to be defective.' "
United States v. Frazier
,
That
Carpenter II
did not invalidate § 2703(d) whole cloth does not meaningfully distinguish this case from
Krull
. What matters is whether it was objectively reasonable for the officers to rely on the statute at the time of the search.
See
*318
agents who acquired Carpenter's CSLI to rely on § 2703(d). The SCA contemplates the Fourth Amendment's protections by specifying some instances where warrants
are
necessary,
see
Carpenter II confirmed that the SCA does not immunize a government officer's collection of CSLI from the safeguards of the Fourth Amendment. Moving forward, traditional Fourth Amendment principles will replace reflexive or mechanical use of § 2703(d). The government must either get a warrant or rely on a recognized exception to the warrant requirement.
III. CONCLUSION
Carpenter II
teaches that, to avoid "embarrass[ing] the future," courts must carefully and incrementally adapt their Fourth Amendment jurisprudence to advancements in the digital era.
Although Warshak announced a prospective rule barring the warrantless search of a suspect's private emails under § 2703(d), the court did not address any other circumstances where reliance on § 2703(d) might be unreasonable. The decision in Warshak therefore would not have alerted the agents in Carpenter's case to the unconstitutionality of seeking the CSLI at issue here.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Timothy Ivory CARPENTER, Defendant-Appellant.
- Cited By
- 25 cases
- Status
- Published