UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 15-4545

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff – Appellee,

v.

BARAKA ZUBERI CHAUKA,

Defendant - Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of 

Maryland, at Baltimore. Ellen L. Hollander, District Judge. 

(1:14-cr-00414-ELH-2)

Submitted: April 21, 2016 Decided: May 4, 2016

Before GREGORY, WYNN, and FLOYD, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.

Jonathan P. Van Hoven, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellant. 

Rod J. Rosenstein, United States Attorney, Jason D. Medinger, 

Assistant United States Attorney, Baltimore, Maryland, for 

Appellee.

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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PER CURIAM:

Baraka Zuberi Chauka appeals the district court’s denial of 

his motion to suppress evidence derived from several wiretaps, 

and his subsequent conviction for conspiracy to distribute 

cocaine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846 (2012), and possession 

with intent to distribute cocaine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. 

§ 841 (2012). 

On appeal, Chauka argues that the wiretap applications were 

defective and the district court erred in failing to suppress 

evidence gathered as a result of those wiretaps. Chauka

contends that: (1) officers misrepresented the need for a 

wiretap because traditional investigative techniques were 

successful in this case; (2) officers did not provide sufficient 

justification to extend the wiretaps to Chauka; and (3) the 

officers were not acting in good faith reliance on the wiretap 

orders due to misrepresentations in the affidavits. 

We review de novo legal conclusions from a district court’s 

denial of a motion to suppress evidence, and review the court’s 

factual findings for clear error. United States v. Wilson, 484 

F.3d 267, 280 (4th Cir. 2007). Determinations of necessity for 

a wiretap are reviewed for abuse of discretion. Id. Wiretap 

orders must conform to both state and federal law, United 

States v. Smith, 31 F.3d 1294, 1297 (4th Cir. 1994), but the 
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relevant federal and Maryland statutes are substantially 

similar. Davis v. State, 43 A.3d 1044, 1046 (Md. 2012). 

Federal and Maryland wiretap statutes require that police 

officers exhaust ordinary investigative techniques before 

applying for a wiretap. Compare Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc.

§§ 10-408(a)(1)(iii), (c)(1)(iii) (Lexis Nexis 2013) with 18 

U.S.C. § 2518(1)(c), (3)(c) (2012). This exhaustion requirement 

is “designed to ensure that the relatively intrusive device of 

wiretapping is [not] ‘routinely employed as the initial step in 

a criminal investigation.’” Smith, 31 F.3d at 1297 (quoting 

United States v. Giordano, 416 U.S. 505, 515 (1974)). 

“[H]owever, the burden . . . impose[d] upon the government to 

show the inadequacy of normal investigative techniques is not 

great, and the adequacy of such a showing is to be tested in a 

practical and commonsense fashion.” Id. (internal quotation 

marks omitted). The Government is not required to demonstrate 

“that it has exhausted all possible alternatives to 

wiretapping,” but instead “need only present specific factual 

information sufficient to establish that it has encountered 

difficulties in penetrating the criminal enterprise or in 

gathering evidence — to the point where wiretapping becomes 

reasonable.” Id. at 1297-98 (ellipsis, brackets, citation, and 

internal quotation marks omitted).
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We conclude that the district court correctly found that 

the affidavits satisfied state and federal exhaustion 

requirements.* The affidavits noted that several investigative 

techniques were attempted but failed to reveal the full scope of 

Chauka’s organization; these techniques included physical 

surveillance, informants, and analysis of telephone toll 

records. Additionally, the affidavits provided particularized 

reasons why numerous other techniques were unlikely to achieve 

all the goals of the investigation. These explanations were 

sufficient to establish necessity for the wiretaps. Wilson, 484 

F.3d at 281; Smith, 31 F.3d at 1299; United States v. Leavis, 

853 F.2d 215, 221 (4th Cir. 1988).

We also conclude that the affidavits were not contradicted 

by the officers’ actions. First, Chauka argues that the 

officers contradicted themselves by stating that physical 

surveillance would be ineffective, while simultaneously 

employing “extensive physical surveillance with numerous mobile 

units.” Although the officers did conduct surveillance on Reed 

and Chauka, the surveillance was often frustrated by the 

counter-surveillance techniques employed by both men. 

Surveillance was made more difficult by the rural location where 

 * We assume, without deciding, that Chauka has standing to 

challenge the wiretaps on Lamont Reed’s phone lines.
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Chauka operated, making it “nearly impossible” to enter the area 

without being seen. 

As the district court noted, much of the successful 

surveillance did not occur in spite of, or alongside the 

wiretaps, but as a direct result of the wiretaps. Officers 

learned where Chauka was traveling and why, and were able to 

surveil him away from his rural area of operation due to the 

information gleaned in the wiretaps. Chauka’s arrest was 

facilitated not by physical surveillance, but by wiretaps that 

revealed Chauka was purchasing cocaine.

Chauka points out that the affidavits attested that GPS 

tracking would likely be ineffective, but officers 

simultaneously applied for a warrant to install a GPS device. 

While the use of tracking devices would assist the police in 

tracking Chauka, however, they could not track all of his 

activities because he had access to multiple vehicles. The use 

of GPS would assist police in determining where Chauka (or 

rather, the vehicle primarily used by Chauka) was at any given 

moment, but could not reveal what Chauka was doing at those 

locations. The officers never asserted that the use of a GPS 

device was impossible, merely that its use was “reasonably 

likely to fail . . . to achieve the full goals and objectives of 

th[e] investigation.” 
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Finally, Chauka argues that the search warrant executed on 

his home demonstrates that the wiretap affidavits were 

inconsistent with the officers’ actions. The affidavits

asserted that search warrants would “not be helpful at this 

stage” because the “conspiracy ha[d] not been fully defined” and 

the execution of search warrants would alert coconspirators 

while only temporarily disrupting Chauka’s operation. However, 

the application for a search warrant on Chauka’s residence, and 

the concomitant disclosure of the surveillance, occurred after 

police arrested Chauka for possession of more than 125 grams of 

cocaine. At that time, officers had been investigating and 

conducting surveillance on Chauka for nearly 2 months, had been 

listening to his phone calls through wiretaps for more than 1 

month, and had been tracking him through the use of GPS for 11 

days. This lengthy monitoring materially changed the 

circumstances of the investigation. Thus, the officers’ later 

use of a search warrant does not contradict their previous 

assertions.

Because we conclude that the district court correctly found 

that the wiretap authorizations were properly issued, we need 

not address Chauka’s argument that the good faith exception does 

not apply. Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s 

judgment. We dispense with oral argument because the facts and 

legal contentions are adequately presented in the materials 
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before this court and argument would not aid the decisional 

process.

AFFIRMED