United States v. Eric Curtis
Opinion
Eric Curtis led a crew that robbed five cell-phone stores located in suburban Chicago. He was arrested following the last of the heists and eventually stood trial on ten criminal charges: four counts for robbery, four counts for aiding in the brandishing of a firearm in relation to a crime of violence, a count for conspiracy, and a count for being a felon in possession of a firearm. A jury convicted him on all counts save two: one for robbery and one for aiding in the brandishing of a firearm. Each acquittal was on a charge related to a robbery of a store in Joliet.
Curtis raises two issues on appeal. First, he argues that the district court should have excluded evidence of his cell-site location information ("CSLI"), which he alleges was obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Second, he complains that the district court prohibited him from cross-examining witnesses about a potential source of bias, and thereby violated the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause. Neither of these alleged errors is enough to disturb the judgment against him, which we affirm.
I
"CSLI is location information generated by cellular phone providers that indicates which cell tower a particular phone was communicating with when a communication was made." Orin S. Kerr,
The Effect of Legislation on Fourth Amendment Protection
, 115 MICH. L. REV. 1117, 1128 (2017). It is capable of "pinpoint[ing] a phone's location within 50 meters."
Carpenter v. United States
, --- U.S. ----,
*848
The government relied on the procedures set forth in the Stored Communications Act (SCA),
The Supreme Court resolved Curtis's Fourth Amendment argument in
Carpenter v. United States
, --- U.S. ----,
Our case stands in the same position as the
Carpenter
remand. The Court has resolved the question whether an SCA order obviates the need for the warrant, but it has not spoken to what should happen next. We must decide whether this conceded error automatically results in relief for Curtis, for whom records covering 314 days were collected. We conclude that it does not. A different part of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence is, in our view, dispositive: evidence obtained in good-faith reliance on a statute later declared unconstitutional need not be excluded.
Illinois v. Krull
,
*849
Curtis's proposed path around
Krull
is ambitious. He does not argue that officers obtained his CSLI in bad faith. Far from it: his motion to suppress seemingly concedes that there would have been probable cause to seek a search warrant. It is
Krull
itself that he attempts to push out of the picture. He argues that
Krull
applies only to statutes authorizing administrative searches. His logic proceeds in three steps. First, he urges, the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule cannot be applied so as to insulate statutes from constitutional challenge. To do so would "destroy[ ] all incentive on the part of individual criminal defendants to litigate the violation of their Fourth Amendment rights."
Krull
,
Experience has shown that the good-faith exception has not had the chilling effect that Curtis fears. Curtis, like many others, has challenged section 2703(d) of the SCA on Fourth Amendment grounds notwithstanding the risk that the exception may apply. See
, e.g.
,
Carpenter
,
supra
;
United States v. Graham
,
The exclusionary rule is designed primarily to deter unconstitutional conduct.
II
The second issue Curtis raises is whether he should have been allowed to ask witnesses about what happened following the first of the five robberies. After that robbery, police went to the home of Ryan Rogers, Curtis's cousin, whom police suspected of organizing the first robbery. A confrontation ensued, and officers shot and killed Ryan. (We use his first name because Eric Rogers also played a role in these events.) Curtis was a witness. Several hours later, after Curtis had returned home, officers raided his house. At that time, Curtis asked for the name of the officer who had killed Ryan and declared his intent to file a complaint. Eric Rogers, *850 Curtis's co-conspirator, was with Curtis while these events transpired.
On the eve of trial, Curtis asked the court if he would be permitted to cross-examine Eric, who had become a government witness, about the shooting and the ensuing interaction between Curtis and law enforcement. Cross-examination, Curtis maintained, would reveal Eric's motivation to testify against him because Eric believed that, given Curtis's contentious relationship with law enforcement, the authorities would look with particular favor on any witness who cooperated against Curtis. The district court denied Curtis's request without prejudice, ruling that the theory was attenuated and would lead the trial on a "goose chase."
The next day, Curtis filed a written motion seeking permission to cross-examine all coconspirators serving as government witnesses about whether they knew that Curtis had accused the police of unjustifiably shooting Ryan. In addition to the theory articulated the day before, Curtis offered two more reasons why cross-examination would reveal bias. First, he contended that asking about Curtis's threat to file a complaint would show that law enforcement had reason to nudge each witness to turn against Curtis. Second, he argued that cross-examination would show that witnesses feared the police because they knew that Ryan had been killed unjustifiably during the investigation of the robberies at issue. The district judge remained unmoved, explaining from the bench that Curtis's theory was too convoluted and that there already was an abundance of evidence that the government's witnesses were biased. The court also found that bringing up a potentially unjustified shooting would be excessively prejudicial. Curtis appeals that ruling. He has pared down his argument at this stage, contending only that the district court should have permitted the questions to show that the witnesses believed they would benefit from testifying against Curtis.
The Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause guarantees the right to effective cross-examination.
United States v. Martin
,
Curtis made the district court's job harder than necessary. He buried his strongest argument-the one raised on appeal-between two theories that were speculative, tenuous, and required a prejudicial account of the shooting. Even if we assume, however, that Curtis's argument was properly raised, we are convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that any error, if there was one, was harmless.
The centerpiece of the case against Curtis was the CSLI data placing him near four of the robberies, coupled with call logs exhibiting that Curtis was in communication with admitted participants during each offense. Though the government induced several of Curtis's coconspirators to testify against him, we are convinced that their testimony added little to the jury's *851 evaluation of the evidence. Curtis's attorney effectively brought out the significant evidence of each witness's bias. One by one, the witnesses admitted to having or expecting a cooperation agreement through which they stood to receive a sizable sentence reduction in their own criminal case-one witness hoped for a reduction of as much as 54 years-in exchange for testifying. Some of the witnesses also admitted to having lied initially to law enforcement about the extent of their and Curtis's involvement, minimizing the former and overstating the latter. The verdict captures the effect of the impeachment. Recall that Curtis was acquitted on the two charges related to the robbery that took place in Joliet and was convicted on the rest. Joliet was the sole robbery for which the government did not have CSLI evidence or evidence of what calls Curtis placed during the robbery. Only witness testimony tied Curtis to the Joliet robbery. The latter, it appears, was not enough by itself to satisfy the jury.
Finally, Curtis's attorney managed to put Ryan's death and Curtis's threatened complaint against the police before the jury notwithstanding the district court's adverse ruling. When an FBI agent took the witness stand, defense counsel asked him about both. Curtis testified in his own defense and told the jury that he had witnessed police kill his cousin and that he and his family were pursuing a complaint against the police. In his closing argument, defense counsel contended that there was an implicit conspiracy to frame Curtis. He asked the jury to recall that "Eric Curtis saw his cousin killed by the police and he stood up to the police." And Curtis reminded them that he had said to the officers, "I want to file a complaint. I saw they killed him for nothing." Because of this, defense counsel argued to the jury that "[Curtis] has got a problem with law enforcement." Continuing, defense counsel told the jury that "[Curtis] is the guy who is standing up to law enforcement. Everybody knew that. And the idea that they didn't is nonsense." While counsel did not say that the prosecutors directed any witness to testify against Curtis, he did suggest that they made witnesses comfortable about turning on Curtis. Because Curtis made his desired arguments and impeached his coconspirators, any error in denying the cross-examination was harmless.
III
Not all constitutional injuries have a remedy. In this case, good faith renders the Fourth Amendment violation non-redressable, and any Sixth Amendment violations were harmless. We therefore AFFIRM the judgment.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Eric CURTIS, Defendant-Appellant.
- Cited By
- 56 cases
- Status
- Published