UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT 

_________________________________ 

ALBERT DEWAYNE BANKS, 

 Plaintiff - Appellant, 

v. 

STEVEN L. OPAT, Former Geary 

County District Attorney in his 

individual capacity; GLEN F. 

VIRDEN, Senior Special Agent, 

Kansas Bureau of Investigation, in 

his individual capacity; TIMOTHY 

BROWN, Former Chief of Junction 

City Police Department, in his 

individual capacity. 

 Defendants - Appellees. 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

ANTHONY CARLYLE 

THOMPSON, 

 Plaintiff - Appellant, 

v. 

GLEN F. VIRDEN, Senior Special 

Agent, Kansas Bureau of 

Investigation, in his individual 

capacity; TIMOTHY BROWN, 

Chief, Junction City Police 

Department, in his individual 

capacity; TONY WOLF, Sheriff, 

Geary County Sheriff’s Department, 

in his individual and official 

capacity, 

 Defendants - Appellees. 

No. 23-3102 

(D.C. No. 5:15-CV-03093-HLT) 

(D. Kan.) 

No. 23-3103 

(D.C. Nos. 5:15-CV-03117-HLT & 

5:15-CV-03093-HLT) 

(D. Kan.) 

FILED 

United States Court of Appeals 

Tenth Circuit 

June 11, 2024

Christopher M. Wolpert 

Clerk of Court

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_________________________________ 

ORDER AND JUDGMENT*

_________________________________ 

Before BACHARACH, BALDOCK, and MORITZ, Circuit Judges. 

_________________________________ 

These appeals grew out of a state investigation involving Mr. Albert 

Dewayne Banks and Mr. Anthony Carlyle Thompson. In the investigation, 

a Kansas prosecutor obtained court orders authorizing wiretaps on 

Mr. Banks and Mr. Thompson when they took their cellphones anywhere in 

the United States. Based on these orders, Kansas law-enforcement agents 

conducted the wiretaps and the federal government indicted the individuals 

on drug charges. A federal district court suppressed evidence from the 

wiretaps, concluding that the state court’s authority over the wiretaps was 

limited to the court’s own district. 

 Mr. Banks and Mr. Thompson sued the prosecutor and three of the 

law-enforcement agents who allegedly conducted the wiretaps. The district 

court granted summary judgment to the defendants, relying on 

* Oral argument would not help us decide the appeal, so we have 

decided the appeal based on the briefing and the record. See Fed. R. App. 

P. 34(a)(2)(C); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). 

This order and judgment does not constitute binding precedent except 

under the doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. 

But the order and judgment may be cited for its persuasive value if 

otherwise appropriate. See Fed. R. App. P. 32.1(a); 10th Cir. R. 32.1(A). 

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 absolute immunity for the prosecutor and 

 a statutory good-faith exception for the three agents allegedly 

carrying out the wiretaps. 

We affirm the grants of summary judgment. 

Standard for Review of Summary Judgment 

 For the summary-judgment rulings, we conduct de novo review, 

applying the same standard that governed in district court. Dahl v. Charles 

F. Dahl, M.D., P.C. Defined Benefit Pension Tr., 744 F.3d 623, 628 

(10th Cir. 2014). Under that standard, the defendants needed to show a 

right to judgment as a matter of law and the absence of a genuine dispute 

of material fact. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). For this determination, we draw all 

reasonable inferences in favor of the non-moving party. Georgelas v. 

Desert Hill Ventures, Inc., 45 F.4th 1193, 1197 (10th Cir. 2022). 

The Claim Against the Prosecutor 

Mr. Banks argues that the prosecutor wasn’t entitled to absolute 

immunity because 

 he vouched for the warrants and 

 wasn’t acting as an advocate when he referred the case for 

federal prosecution. 

But Mr. Banks forfeited both arguments by failing to make them in district 

court. See Anderson v. Spirit Aerosystems Holdings, Inc., 827 F.3d 1229, 

1238 (10th Cir. 2016). In district court, Mr. Banks mentioned that the 

prosecutor had signed the orders and had disclosed information to federal 

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agents. But Mr. Banks didn’t argue in district court that these actions had 

stripped the prosecutor of absolute immunity. 

The Claims Against the Three Agents 

Mr. Banks and Mr. Thompson also challenge the district court’s 

ruling of good faith for the three law-enforcement agents who allegedly 

carried out the wiretaps. 

In the criminal proceedings, the federal district court ultimately 

concluded that the orders had exceeded the state court’s authority. But in 

the civil proceedings, defenses exist for law-enforcement agents acting in 

good faith. 18 U.S.C. § 2520(d)(1); Kan. Stat. Ann. § 22-2518(2). The 

court applied these defenses here, concluding that the agents’ reliance on 

the orders had been objectively reasonable. So the district court properly 

concluded that the undisputed evidence had shown good faith in carrying 

out the orders. 

The federal district court ultimately excluded evidence of some calls 

because the wiretaps had intercepted calls outside the state court’s district. 

But this ruling doesn’t negate the good faith of the law-enforcement 

officers when making the same mistake that the state court had made. 

We addressed a similar issue in United States v. Workman, 863 F.3d 

1313 (10th Cir. 2017). There we considered criminal proceedings growing 

out of a federal magistrate judge’s warrant authorizing installation of 

software to identify individuals using a site to access child pornography. 

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Id. at 1316. A user in another district accessed the website and argued that 

the magistrate judge had lacked authority to authorize software that would 

identify users in other districts. Id. at 1316–17. We assumed for the sake of 

argument that the magistrate judge had exceeded his geographic authority. 

Id. at 1317–18. But we held that the evidence would have been admissible 

anyway because agents had acted in good faith when relying on the 

magistrate judge’s order. Id. at 1320–21. 

Here the state court exceeded its authority by issuing orders 

authorizing interception of information outside of the court’s area of 

authority. In Workman, however, we concluded that the nuances of the 

court’s geographic jurisdictional limits wouldn’t have been readily 

apparent to law-enforcement officers. Id. The same is true here. 

Mr. Banks and Mr. Thompson disagree, arguing that Workman is 

distinguishable because the sources of geographic authority differ here and 

the nuances were subtler in Workman. Though differences exist, they don’t 

cast doubt on the objective reasonableness of the law-enforcement officers’ 

reliance on the wiretap orders. 

Granted, the sources of geographic authority differ here and in 

Workman. There the magistrate judge’s geographic limits appeared in a 

federal rule of criminal procedure (Rule 41); here the limit appears in state 

law. But Mr. Banks and Mr. Thompson don’t explain why this difference 

would matter. In both cases, the law-enforcement officers could reasonably 

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assume that the court would correctly apply the geographic limits when 

authorizing the interception of data. See United States v. Pemberton, 

94 F.4th 1130, 1137–40 (10th Cir. 2024) (applying Workman to uphold the 

denial of a motion to suppress a state court’s warrant even though the state 

court lacked authority over the region specified in the warrant). 

Mr. Banks and Mr. Thompson also point out that 

 the magistrate judge in Workman had authorized installation of 

software onto a server within his own district and 

 here the state court authorized wiretaps anywhere in the United 

States. 

Again, the difference doesn’t cast doubt on the objective reasonableness of 

the agents’ actions. In Workman, the court had authorized installation of 

malware that would identify users anywhere in the United States. See 

United States v. Workman, 863 F.3d 1313, 1315–16 (10th Cir. 2017). But 

we concluded in Workman that law-enforcement agents could reasonably 

rely on a magistrate judge’s application of the geographic limits on his 

authority. Id. at 1319–21. The same is true here as to the agents’ reliance 

on the state court’s application of its geographic limits. 

Finally, Mr. Banks and Mr. Thompson argue that even if Workman 

otherwise applied, there’s no good-faith defense for mistakes of law. For 

this argument, Mr. Banks and Mr. Thompson rely on Heggy v. Heggy, 

944 F.2d 1537 (10th Cir. 1991). There we concluded that a defendant 

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couldn’t avoid liability based on his subjective belief that he could put a 

wiretap on his own home phone. Id. at 1541–42. 

But Heggy didn’t involve an order authorizing a wiretap, and we 

observed that the law provided a good-faith defense when someone relies 

on a court order. Id. at 1542. Here we have federal and state statutes 

expressly providing a defense based on good-faith reliance on a court 

order. So Heggy doesn’t undermine the applicability of the good-faith 

defenses. 

Affirmed. 

Entered for the Court 

Robert E. Bacharach 

Circuit Judge 

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