Opinion ID: 2736649
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The August 2012 Examination 6

Text: Mathis also contests the validity of the second examination of his smartphone, which occurred on August 1, 2012. Before the district court, Mathis argued in his renewed motion to suppress that the multimedia messages obtained during the August 2012 examination were not in plain view during the December 2011 examination and there was no authorization for the August 2012 examination because no new search warrant had been obtained. On appeal, Mathis contends evidence obtained from his smartphone on August 1, 2012, should have been suppressed because the examination occurred well after the expiration of the 10-day period provided in the warrant. Mathis devotes only two paragraphs of his sixty-one page opening brief to this issue. In those two paragraphs, Mathis mostly repeats the facts underlying his claim and his actual argument boils down to three sentences. First, he argues “[t]he district court erred in not granting Mathis’s motion to suppress at trial where the evidence was obtained outside the scope and time frame of the search warrant.” Second, he 6 Although Mathis arguably waived his challenge to the August 2012 examination because he did not raise it in his motion to suppress prior to trial, see United States v. Ford, 34 F.3d 992, 994 n.2 (11th Cir. 1994) (concluding a party’s failure to raise a suppression argument prior to trial resulted in a waiver of the issue); Fed. R. Crim. P. 12(b)(3), (e), the district court considered and rejected the issue on the merits and we will therefore address it, see United States v. Lall, 607 F.3d 1277, 1290 (11th Cir. 2010). 23 Case: 13-13109 Date Filed: 09/24/2014 Page: 24 of 42 asserts “[e]vidence seized while the police are acting outside the boundaries of the warrant is subject to suppression.” Third, Mathis contends that “[o]nly during a search conducted eight mo[n]ths [after the initial search], outside the scope of the search warrant[,] was Hayes able to determine who sent the MMS messages.” Mathis does not argue the eight month delay was itself unreasonable or that he was prejudiced by the delay. In support of his arguments, Mathis cites only a single Fourth Circuit opinion from 1994 for the proposition that, if officers seize items which are not enumerated in a search warrant, those items are subject to suppression.7 Although Mathis contends the second examination of his phone violated his constitutional rights, we have held that “[t]he Fourth Amendment does not specify that search warrants contain expiration dates,” and that a search conducted after a warrant’s expiration date does not necessarily require suppression of the evidence. United States v. Gerber, 994 F.2d 1556, 1559-60 (11th Cir. 1993); see also Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135, 144, 135 S. Ct. 695, 702 (2009) (“To trigger the exclusionary rule, police conduct must be sufficiently deliberate that 7 Mathis has waived any arguments that he raises only in his reply brief because those arguments are too late. United States v. Lopez, 649 F.3d 1222, 1246 (11th Cir. 2011); United States v. Evans, 473 F.3d 1115, 1120 (11th Cir. 2006) (“Arguments raised for the first time in a reply brief are not properly before a reviewing court.” (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted)). In addition, the record does not support Mathis’s contention in his reply brief that the Government searched his smartphone month after month for eight months. Instead, the record establishes that Mathis’s smartphone was examined only twice. 24 Case: 13-13109 Date Filed: 09/24/2014 Page: 25 of 42 exclusion can meaningfully deter it, and sufficiently culpable that such deterrence is worth the price paid by the justice system.”). We need not decide this issue, however, because even if the August 2012 examination violated Mathis’s Fourth Amendment rights, any error in admitting the evidence at trial was harmless. See United States v. Rhind, 289 F.3d 690, 694 (11th Cir. 2002). The record demonstrates that officers obtained Mathis’s SMS messages, i.e., plain text messages, during the initial examination of his cell phone, but could not recover his multimedia messages, i.e., text messages containing pictures or videos. The initial search was conducted within the ten-day period provided in the warrant and, as discussed above, was valid. Mathis’s plain text messages, even without the multimedia messages and accompanying pictures, provided overwhelming evidence of Mathis’s guilt on Counts One and Two. Accordingly, any error in admitting the multimedia messages was harmless. 8 See id. (concluding a Fourth Amendment violation was harmless because evidence of the defendants’ guilt was overwhelming).