Opinion ID: 4357626
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Ashby’s Cell phone Records

Text: Ashby contends that the call records and cell site location information related to his cell phone, which were used to track his location the night of the murder, as well as whom he was in contact with, should be suppressed as the fruits of an illegal search of his phone. While the investigation into the murder of Mr. Bolden was proceeding, Ashby was arrested on January 11, 2010 on an unrelated charge. He was taken into custody, and his cell phone was seized incident to arrest. Detective Greene used Ashby’s cell phone to call his own cell phone twice, Detective Wilson’s phone once, and the police department’s homicide desk, all while the cell phone was in police custody. Detective Greene testified that he used Ashby’s phone to call his own phone in order to obtain the phone number 30 associated with Ashby’s phone. The MPD later obtained warrants that allowed them to access the call records and cell site location information used at trial. 15 Ashby made a mid-trial motion to suppress the cell phone evidence, which the trial court denied, as it found no Fourth Amendment violation in the detective’s conduct. On appeal, Ashby argues that this cell phone evidence was the “only evidence connecting Ashby to the charged crimes” – aside from Mr. Thomas’ testimony, discussed in section II.D below – and, because the police could not have obtained this information without Ashby’s phone number, it is fruit of the illegal search. The government argues, in part, that the phone calls used to obtain the phone number did not constitute a prohibited invasive search, but rather a permissible search incident to arrest. The Supreme Court has held that, even when a cell phone is seized incident to arrest, a search warrant is required to conduct a search of the digital contents of 15 An FBI cell phone tower location expert testified to Ashby’s location based on which cell phone tower the call utilized. Though Ashby challenges the MPD’s use of his cell phone while he was in custody, he does not challenge the use of the location information, which the MPD obtained through a warrant issued on January 26, 2010. We note that the Supreme Court recently held that cell phone tower data could generally not be obtained by law enforcement without a warrant. Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206, 2221 (2018). 31 that phone because of the “vast quantities of personal information” available on a modern cell phone. Riley v. California, 134 S. Ct. 2473, 2485 (2014). However, the Court has expressly allowed for manipulation of a cell phone and removal of the battery to prevent remote access to potential evidence, and has limited the prohibition on warrantless searches to the “digital data” contained on the phone. Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2485. A physical search of the cell phone itself for identifying features is a permissible search incident to arrest, as it does not invade the “immense storage capacity” of the digital device. Id. at 2488. In this case, the information that Ashby challenges, such as call records and cell site location information, were obtained pursuant to validly issued search warrants – and Ashby’s phone number was not used to obtain those warrants. In his January 22 application for a warrant for Ashby’s cell phone, Detective Greene included only a description of the phone, not the phone number 16 – and relied on 16 The warrant application referred to a “black and silver Motorola Boost [] cell[]phone,” and included the International Mobile Equipment Identity/Identifier (“IMEI”) number and Subscriber Identity/Identification Module (“SIM”) number. While the record does not indicate exactly how Detective Greene obtained the IMEI and SIM numbers, they were presumably viewable by removing the back of the phone and looking at the numbers printed on the interior hardware. See, e.g., Fed. Commc’n Comm’n, Protect your Smart Device (March 28, 2018), https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/protect-your-mobile-device (“the [IMEI] . . . is usually found in your device settings or printed on a label affixed to your (continued…) 32 the facts that had emerged from the police investigation up to that point to articulate why Ashby was a suspect and why searching his cell phone would be helpful to the investigation. The January 22 warrant permitted the MPD to legally obtain the digital contents of the phone, including the phone number, call log, and other information – and the phone number and call records were, in fact, obtained using this warrant.17 On January 26, the MPD applied for another warrant – this time making use of the phone number obtained using the last warrant – and obtained a warrant that allowed them to access the cell site location information. On this record, it is clear that the detective’s effort to physically examine and obtain identifying information for the cell phone was a permissible warrantless search incident to arrest. While Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2485, does not specifically address a scenario in which a police officer makes phone calls from the suspect’s phone, as was done here, this is ultimately immaterial, as the phone number was (…continued) device underneath the battery.”). This would appear to be a physical manipulation of the phone that is permissible without a warrant under Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2485. 17 Ashby argues that the January 22 search warrant is outside the appellate record and cannot be considered because it was not presented at trial. However, we granted appellee’s motion for the Court to take judicial notice of these Superior Court Records. See S.S. v. D.M., 597 A.2d 870, 880 (D.C. 1991) (the court may “take judicial notice of the contents of court records.”); D.C. Code § 17-305 (2012 Repl.) (the appellate court “shall review the record on appeal”). 33 not used to obtain the January 22 warrant, and the search conducted pursuant to the January 22 warrant independently yielded the phone number. Thus, even assuming arguendo that there were a poisonous tree, that tree bore no fruit, as nothing was done with Ashby’s phone number after Detective Greene first obtained it. Indeed, the phone number was all but irrelevant in the first instance, as the cell phone was already in police custody, so there was no question about how to locate the device or which device to search once the warrant was obtained. The evidence that was obtained as a result of the January 22 and January 26 warrants was therefore not the result of an “exploitation of . . . illegality” and did not require suppression. Hicks v. United States, 705 A.2d 636, 639 (D.C. 1997). We thus find no Fourth Amendment violation and do not disturb the trial court’s holding.