Opinion ID: 4557157
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Execution of the Warrants

Text: An investigator with the United States Attorney’s Office executed the search warrants a few days later using a software program called Cellebrite to extract all of the data on both phones, including data the user of the phones likely believed had been deleted. For each phone, the extraction process created a “.bin file” containing an image in computer code of the phone’s entire contents. A Cellebrite physical analyzer then decoded and parsed the image into categories of data — e.g., call logs, emails, photographs, videos, movies, SMS and MMS messages, 13 thumbnails, app usage, internet search inquiries, etc. — and generated an extraction report that detailed, in readable and reviewable form, every item of data on the phone. The extraction report for the LG phone was 1,174 pages long; for the Alcatel One Touch, the report spanned 1,805 pages. The extraction report for the LG phone contained a series of text messages between Mr. Burns and Mr. Osuchukwu on the evening of November 14, 2015. The texts culminated in a message sent at 9:02 p.m. in which Mr. Burns told Mr. Osuchukwu, “I left the door open for you all, so it’s yours tonight.” The warrants, however, did not limit police to a search for the texts between Mr. Burns and Mr. Osuchukwu on the day of the shooting, and investigators scrutinized all of the nearly 3,000 pages of the extraction reports for any materials and information related to the investigation of Mr. Osuchukwu’s death. Among other things, that review yielded a highly incriminating set of internet search inquiries made by Mr. Burns in the days leading up to the homicide: • “Are you capable of killing your best friend?” (November 5, 2015) • “What does it feel like to kill someone?” (November 7, 2015) • “What does it feel like to murder someone?” (November 7, 2015) 14 • “How does it feel when you kill someone for the first time?” (November 7, 2015) • “How much crack would an ounce of cocaine make?” (November 9, 2015) • “How to sell weed and make money” (November 10, 2015) • “Will God forgive murderers?” (November 10, 2015) • “Semi-automatic pistol in Wikipedia” (November 10, 2015) • “Shot placement for instant kill” (November 14, 2015) The extraction reports also contained a photograph of Mr. Burns holding a 9- millimeter semi-automatic handgun, the same type used in the murder; text messages from Mr. Burns to another cousin (named JaJa) on November 13, 2015 in which Mr. Burns said, “I’m clapping him today” and “Everything already in motion . . . waiting on this Cali boy”; a log reflecting a phone call from Mr. Burns to JaJa at 9:50 p.m. on November 14, 2015; and a video and other postings on Mr. Burns’s Instagram account suggesting that Mr. Burns went to New York City after the homicide to sell Mr. Osuchukwu’s drugs and used the proceeds to buy a new car. C. Mr. Burns’s Motion to Suppress the Fruits of the Warrants 15 Mr. Burns moved before trial to suppress all of the data recovered from his phones. Citing Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373 (2014), he asserted that modern smart phones merit the most stringent privacy protections under the Fourth Amendment and argued that the search warrants for his phones were overbroad, unsupported by probable cause, and lacking in particularity. Detective Littlejohn testified at a pretrial evidentiary hearing on the motion. He stated that Mr. Burns was not a suspect at the time his phones were seized and that police had no information suggesting that any photographs or evidence of internet activity on the phones had any connection to the investigation of Mr. Osuchukwu’s death. Detective Littlejohn stated further that he has applied for search warrants for “probably over 25 or so” cell phones in other cases and that the language he used in the search warrants for Mr. Burns’s phones was “basically” the same “standard language” he has used in all of the cell phone search warrants for which he has applied. The trial judge denied the motion to suppress, stating: I don’t see a problem with the scope of this search warrant. There was a search warrant that was issued by another associate judge. Even if I saw . . . a problem with it, I don’t know what I could do. I don’t have authority to revoke a decision that one of my colleagues has made, but even if I did, I don’t see a problem with it. 16 D. Analysis under the Warrant Clause The Warrant Clause of the Fourth Amendment commands that “no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. “These words are precise and clear.” Stanford v. Texas, 379 U.S. 476, 481 (1965). “They reflect the determination of those who wrote the Bill of Rights that the people of this new Nation should forever ‘be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects’ from intrusion and seizure by officers acting under the unbridled authority of a general warrant.” Id. (quoting U.S. Const. amend. IV). And through their creation of the dual constitutional mandates of probable cause and particularity, the words of the Warrant Clause are meant to deny police the ability “to rummage at will” through a person’s private matters. See Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332, 345 (2009); see also Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 467 (1971). 17 The probable cause standard is well defined. A judge considering an application for a search warrant must determine whether, in light of all of the circumstances described in the supporting affidavit, “there is a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place.” Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 238 (1983). The affidavit thus “must demonstrate cause to believe” not only that an item of evidence “is likely to be found at the place to be searched,” but also that there is “a nexus between the item to be seized and [the] criminal behavior” under investigation. United States v. Griffith, 867 F.3d 1265, 1271 (D.C. Cir. 2017) (quoting Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551, 568 (2004); Warden, Md. Penitentiary v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, 307 (1967)). A judge’s decision to issue a search warrant, moreover, may not be “a mere ratification of the bare conclusions of others.” Gates, 462 U.S. at 239. Rather, an affidavit submitted in support of a warrant application must provide the judge “a substantial basis for determining the existence of probable cause” — i.e., it must supply “[s]ufficient information” to enable the judge to make independent findings on the necessary elements of the probable cause standard. Id. Only in that way can the judge “perform his ‘neutral and detached’ function and not serve merely as a rubber stamp for the police.” Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 111 (1964) (quoting Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 14 (1948)). 18 A search warrant affidavit therefore “must contain adequate supporting facts about the underlying circumstances to show that probable cause exists for the issuance of the warrant.” United States v. McPhearson, 469 F.3d 518, 524 (6th Cir. 2006) (internal quotation marks omitted). The “particularized facts” and circumstances that must be set forth in the affidavit are essential to the judge’s finding of “a fair probability that evidence of a crime will be located on the premises of the proposed search,” id. (internal quotation marks omitted), and “form the central basis of the [judge’s independent] probable cause determination,” United States v. Underwood, 725 F.3d 1076, 1081 (9th Cir. 2013), thereby ensuring that any search authorized by a warrant “will be carefully tailored to its justifications, and will not take on the character of the wide-ranging exploratory searches the Framers intended to prohibit,” Maryland v. Garrison, 480 U.S. 79, 84 (1987). By contrast, an affidavit that states only “suspicions, beliefs, or conclusions, without providing some underlying factual circumstances regarding veracity, reliability, and basis of knowledge, is a ‘bare bones’ affidavit, and fails to establish probable cause.” United States v. West, 520 F.3d 604, 610 (6th Cir. 2008) (internal quotation marks omitted). As examples, some “bare bones” affidavits state that the 19 affiant “has cause to suspect and does believe” there is contraband or other evidence of a crime located on the premises to be searched, or that the affiant has “received reliable information from a credible person” to the same effect. Gates, 462 U.S. at 239 (first quoting Nathanson v. United States, 290 U.S. 41, 44 (1933); then quoting Aguilar, 378 U.S. at 109); see also United States v. Pope, 467 F.3d 912, 920 (5th Cir. 2006). Just as an unadorned, bare bones claim of probable cause based on an affiant’s “training and experience” fails to provide the judge considering a warrant application a sufficient factual basis to assess compliance with the Fourth Amendment, Underwood, 725 F.3d at 1081, these “wholly conclusory statement[s]” give the judge “virtually no basis at all for making a judgment regarding probable cause,” Gates, 462 U.S. at 239. The particularity requirement — that a warrant “set out with particularity” the “scope of the authorized search,” Kentucky v. King, 563 U.S. 452, 459 (2011) — “is closely tied to the requirement of probable cause,” Griffith, 867 F.3d at 1275 (quoting 2 Wayne R. LaFave, Search & Seizure § 3.7(a) (5th ed. 2016)). It constrains law enforcement by “prevent[ing] the seizure of one thing under a warrant describing another,” Marron v. United States, 275 U.S. 192, 196 (1927), and avoids the issuance of search warrants “on loose, vague[,] or doubtful bases of fact,” Go-Bart Importing Co. v. United States, 282 U.S. 344, 357 (1931). With a 20 properly particularized warrant, it is the issuing judge who decides “what is to be taken,” and “nothing is left to the discretion of the officer executing [it],” making “general searches . . . impossible.” Marron, 275 U.S. at 196. The privacy interests underlying these fundamental Fourth Amendment principles may be at their most compelling when police wish to search the contents of a modern smart phone. The Supreme Court held in Riley that police generally must obtain a search warrant before they may review the digital contents of a cell phone seized incident to arrest. 573 U.S. at 401. Writing for a unanimous Court, Chief Justice Roberts noted that modern cell phones contain “vast quantities of personal information,” id. at 386, and are essentially “digital record[s] of nearly every aspect of their [owners’] lives — from the mundane to the intimate,” id. at 395. The Chief Justice added that modern smart phones have “immense storage capacity” and typically hold “many distinct types of information” — emails, text messages, notes, photographs, videos, internet browsing histories, calendars, personal contacts, phone logs, etc. — all “dat[ing] back to the purchase of the phone, or even earlier.” Id. at 393-94. The Chief Justice emphasized that the collection of so much varied and sensitive information on a single device, carried almost everywhere by its owner, 21 facilitates in an unprecedented way the “reconstruct[ion]” of “[t]he sum of an individual’s private life” and “convey[s] far more” about a person than could previously be found in the search of a physical space. Id. at 394. “An Internet search and browsing history, for example, . . . could reveal an individual’s private interests or concerns — perhaps a search for certain symptoms of disease, coupled with frequent visits to WebMD.” Id. at 395-96. GPS and other historical location information can pinpoint a person’s physical location at all times of the day and night, going back weeks, months, and even years. Id. at 396. And the ever-present mobile applications, known as “apps,” “offer a range of tools for managing detailed information about all aspects of a person’s life,” including political and religious affiliations, banking and other financial matters, addiction treatments, dating and romantic interests, pregnancy milestones, hobbies, and “buying or selling just about anything.” Id. As a result, “a cell phone search would typically expose to the government far more than the most exhaustive search of a house: A phone not only contains in digital form many sensitive records previously found in the home; it also contains a broad array of private information never found in a home in any form.” Id. at 396-97 (emphasis in original); cf. Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 589 (1980) (articulating the venerable, pre-Riley understanding that Fourth Amendment protections are never “more clearly defined than when bounded by the unambiguous physical dimensions of an individual’s home”). 22 A search warrant for data on a modern smart phone therefore must fully comply with the requirements of the Warrant Clause. It is not enough for police to show there is probable cause to arrest the owner or user of the cell phone, or even to establish probable cause to believe the phone contains some evidence of a crime. To be compliant with the Fourth Amendment, the warrant must specify the particular items of evidence to be searched for and seized from the phone and be strictly limited to the time period and information or other data for which probable cause has been properly established through the facts and circumstances set forth under oath in the warrant’s supporting affidavit. Vigilance in enforcing the probable cause and particularity requirements is thus essential to the protection of the vital privacy interests inherent in virtually every modern cell phone and to the achievement of the “meaningful constraints” contemplated in Riley, 573 U.S. at 399. As the Supreme Court recently reiterated, judges are “obligated — as ‘subtler and more far-reaching means of invading privacy have become available to the Government’ — to ensure that the ‘progress of science’ does not erode Fourth Amendment protections.” Carpenter v. United States, 138 S.Ct. 2206, 2223 (2018) (quoting Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 473-74 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting) (requiring that search warrants be obtained for cell-site location data generated from the use of smart phones and held by third-party providers)). 23 We conclude as a matter of law that the search warrants for Mr. Burns’s cell phones did not satisfy the requirements of the Warrant Clause. The facts set forth in the warrants’ supporting affidavits established probable cause to believe the phones contained text messages between Mr. Burns and Mr. Osuchukwu on November 14, 2015 and a log showing the precise time of the telephone call Mr. Burns reportedly made to his cousin (W-3) that night. The facts alleged in the affidavits also supplied probable cause to support a search of the GPS tracking features on the phones to determine Mr. Burns’s whereabouts at pertinent times on November 14 and 15, 2015. But beyond those discrete items, the affidavits stated no facts that even arguably provided a reason to believe that any other information or data on the phones had any nexus to the investigation of Mr. Osuchukwu’s death. In lieu of facts, Detective Littlejohn simply stated it was his “belief” there was probable cause that evidence related to the homicide would be found on the phones — specifically, in the phones’ subscriber and owner information, call logs, contact lists, voice mail and text messages, videos, photographs, and tweets. The detective added it was his “belief” this information could establish the whereabouts 24 of Mr. Burns’s and W-3’s phones at the time of the murder and “help identify potential witnesses, suspects and confederates yet unknown.” The affidavits were thus classic “bare bones” statements as to everything on Mr. Burns’s phones for which Detective Littlejohn made a claim of probable cause beyond the three narrow categories of data for which the affidavits made proper factual showings. In approving a more expansive request, the warrant judge failed to fulfill his obligation to make an independent determination of probable cause, Gates, 462 U.S. at 239, and risked becoming “a rubber stamp for the police,” Aguilar, 378 U.S. at 111. The actual search warrants, moreover, went even further than Detective Littlejohn’s unsupported assertions of probable cause in the affidavits and authorized the review of literally all of the data on both phones. The warrants allowed police to search for “[a]ll records” and “any evidence” on the phones related to violations of the District’s first-degree murder statute and expressly sanctioned the search of several expansive categories of data Detective Littlejohn never even mentioned in the affidavits. Those categories included schedule and travel information; saved usernames and passwords; documents; and “[r]ecords of Internet activity, including firewall logs, caches, browser history and cookies, 25 ‘bookmarked’ or ‘favorite’ web pages, search terms that the user entered into any Internet search engine, and records of user-typed web addresses.” As to these broad categories of data, the search warrants were issued based on nothing — not even a bare bones assertion of probable cause. The warrants also lacked particularity, describing the objects of the search in the most general terms imaginable. Rather than specifying the three narrow items of evidence for which the affidavits established probable cause, the warrants broadly authorized the seizure of “any evidence” on the phones and listed, by way of examples, generic categories covering virtually all of the different types of data found on modern cell phones. The warrants imposed no meaningful limitations as to how far back in time police could go or what applications they could review and, instead, endorsed the broadest possible search without regard to the facts of the case or the limited showings of probable cause set forth in the affidavits. In any context, a search warrant’s “general description” of items to be seized, such as “records, mail, correspondence, and communications[,] is immediately suspect as being based upon nothing more than conjecture that such items related to the crime under investigation actually exist.” 2 Wayne R. LaFave, Search & Seizure § 4.6(a) (5th ed. 2012 & 2019 update) (internal quotation marks 26 omitted). Particularly given the heightened privacy interests attendant to modern smart phones under Riley, it is thus constitutionally intolerable for search warrants simply to list generic categories of data typically found on such devices as items subject to seizure. The absence of particularity in the warrants for Mr. Burns’s phones is no doubt attributable to the use of a template. As Detective Littlejohn acknowledged at the pretrial suppression hearing, he used basically the same language he has used in at least twenty-five other cell phone warrants in listing the categories of evidence to be seized from the phones and the types of data for which he claimed the existence of probable cause. “Templates are, of course, fine to use as a starting point.” United States v. Winn, 79 F. Supp. 3d 904, 919 (S.D. Ill. 2015). “But they must be tailored to the facts of each case.” Id.; see United States v. Oglesby, No. 4:18 CR 0626, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 71238, at -22 (S.D. Tex. April 26, 2019) (following Winn). Detective Littlejohn failed to do any tailoring of his template for cell phone search warrants, and as a result the warrants for Mr. Burns’s phones did not state with particularity “the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized,” as required by the Warrant Clause. Instead, the warrants “swe[pt] too broadly in 27 describing the items subject to seizure,” Griffith, 867 F.3d at 1279, and allowed a “wide-ranging exploratory search[]” not “carefully tailored to its justifications” — precisely the type of unbridled rummaging “the Framers intended to prohibit,” Garrison, 480 U.S. at 84. 2 Other courts addressing the validity of cell phone search warrants in similar circumstances have come to the same conclusion we have reached here. See, e.g., Winn, 79 F. Supp. 3d at 919-21; United States v. Morales, 77 M.J. 567, 574-76 (A. Ct. Crim. App. 2017); Buckham v. State, 185 A.3d 1, 15, 18-19 (Del. 2018); Commonwealth v. Broom, 52 N.E.3d 81, 88-90 (Mass. 2016); State v. Henderson, 854 N.W.2d 616, 631-34 (Neb. 2014); People v. Thompson, 116 N.Y.S. 3d 2, 3-4 (N.Y. App. Div. 2019). In Morales, the case with the most closely analogous facts, police investigating an alleged sexual assault applied for a search warrant for a cell phone 2 In the course of their extensive briefing before this court, the parties and amicus curiae have suggested various models regarding the specificity with which cell phone search warrants might be required to identify the data to be seized and/or the methods by which the searches are to be conducted. We decline to adopt any such model, as a declaration of definitive rules for the drafting and execution of all cell phone warrants is not necessary to our disposition. The complexities of delineating the proper scope and methods of execution of cell phone search warrants will be best addressed through case-by-case adjudications focused on fundamental Fourth Amendment principles and the facts of each case. 28 they had seized from the chief suspect in the case. 77 M.J. at 571. The affidavit submitted in support of the warrant request described an inculpatory text message the suspect was reported to have sent to the complainant, but it presented no other facts to establish a nexus between the alleged assault and any other data that might be found on the phone. Id. The warrant issued by a magistrate nonetheless authorized a forensic examination of all of the phone’s digital data, and in the course of the ensuing search, police reviewed a photo-editing application on the phone and came across three photographs of the actual assault as it was being committed. Id. at 571-72. The trial court denied a motion to suppress the photographs, and the suspect (by then the defendant) was convicted of the sexual assault. Id. at 572-73. The appellate court reversed, holding that although the warrant affidavit made out probable cause to search the defendant’s text messages, the affidavit “provided no factual predicate” to search for photographs “and no factual basis to conduct an open-ended search of the phone’s entire contents.” Id. at 577. As here, the warrant thus violated the probable cause and particularity requirements of the Warrant Clause. Id. at 575. The government cites decisions of a few of the federal circuit courts for the proposition that a cell phone search warrant satisfies the Warrant Clause as long as the warrant limits the authority to search to evidence of a particular crime and is 29 supported by an affidavit establishing probable cause that at least some evidence of the crime specified in the warrant will be found in the phone’s data. See, e.g., United States v. Bishop, 910 F.3d 335, 337 (7th Cir. 2018); United States v. Castro, 881 F.3d 961, 965 (6th Cir. 2018); United States v. Bass, 785 F.3d 1043, 1049 (6th Cir. 2015). These decisions do not persuade us to alter our conclusion. First, the decisions cited by the government mostly arose in circumstances in which the affidavits submitted in support of the warrants made robust showings of probable cause for a range of relevant evidence likely to be contained within the phones’ data, without a way of knowing in advance precisely where within that data the evidence would be found. See, e.g., Bass, 785 F.3d at 1050 (“At the time of the seizure, however, the officers could not have known where this information was located in the cell phone or in what format.”); see also Bishop, 910 F.3d at 337 (“[A]s with filing cabinets [in an office], the incriminating evidence may be in any file or folder [on the phone].”). The same cannot be said here. Although Mr. Burns’s text messages with Mr. Osuchukwu might have been stored in a third-party application (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) rather than in the standard messaging applications on the phones, it was readily apparent that those messages, like the 30 limited phone log information and GPS data for which probable cause also had been established, would not be found in Mr. Burns’s internet search history, photographs, or any of the many other broad categories of data included in the unlimited, template-based search authorized by the warrants. The few discrete items for which probable cause had been shown could have been obtained through a targeted search of a tiny fraction of the phones’ data. Second, the cases cited by the government are not as definitive as the government suggests and, even if adopted, would not support the government’s position here. Bass makes clear that a statement in a cell phone search warrant limiting the search to evidence of a particular crime is sufficient to satisfy the particularity requirement of the Warrant Clause only if a more specific description of the items subject to seizure could not reasonably be provided: “The proper metric of sufficient specificity is whether it was reasonable to provide a more specific description of the items at that juncture of the investigation.” 785 F.3d at 1050 (quoting United States v. Meek, 366 F.3d 705, 716 (9th Cir. 2004)). Bishop, the case identified by the government at oral argument as its strongest, makes the same point: “[S]pecificity is a relative matter. A warrant may be thought ‘too general’ only if some more-specific alternative would have done better at protecting privacy while permitting legitimate investigation.” 910 F.3d at 337. 31 The search warrants for Mr. Burns’s phones did not satisfy the Bass/Bishop requirement, as they easily could have provided a more specific description of the items subject to seizure. The government has advanced no reason — and we can think of none — why, consistent with the narrow showings of probable cause in the supporting affidavits, the warrants could not have been limited to a search for Mr. Burns’s text messages with Mr. Osuchukwu on November 14, 2015, the log revealing the precise time of Mr. Burns’s phone call with his cousin later that night, and GPS data showing the locations of the phones on November 14 and 15, 2015. Thus, even if we were inclined to follow the decisions cited by the government, those decisions would not lead to a finding of sufficient particularity in this case. The government also contends, as a matter of policy, that the warrants’ extraordinary breadth was justified by the police department’s need for leads in the investigation and Detective Littlejohn’s view of Mr. Burns’s phones as “a promising avenue for insight into how and why Mr. Osuchukwu had been killed.” This argument must be rejected. A law enforcement officer’s interest in discovering leads or otherwise furthering his investigation, no matter how understandable in the circumstances, is never an acceptable substitute for the 32 constitutionally required showing of probable cause that must be made before a search warrant may be issued. Police might often believe that data on a smart phone could shed light on the way a crime was committed or “help identify potential witnesses, suspects and confederates yet unknown,” as the affidavits here surmised. But without a proper showing of probable cause, a search warrant is not available as a general investigative tool for law enforcement. Questioning at oral argument fully exposed the weakness of the government’s position. Asked whether a warrant authorizing a search of the entire contents of the cell phone used by the neighbor who called 911 on the night of Mr. Osuchukwu’s death would have been permissible as long as the warrant expressly limited the data to be seized to evidence of the homicide, government counsel readily acknowledged that such a warrant would have been overbroad and unduly intrusive. The government thereby conceded, at least implicitly, that probable cause to believe the neighbor’s phone contained a log showing the exact time of the 911 call — from which the time of the shooting, a material fact in the investigation, could have been inferred — would have been insufficient to support an unlimited warrant. The answer must be the same for the warrants for Mr. Burns’s phones, as in both sets of circumstances the phones were reasonably 33 believed to contain only limited and discrete items of evidence related to the investigation. In sum, the affidavits submitted by Detective Littlejohn in support of the search warrant applications established probable cause to look for and seize evidence likely to be found in at most three narrow categories of data on Mr. Burns’s phones. The warrants, however, authorized a far more extensive search and failed to describe the items to be seized with anywhere near as much particularity as the Constitution required in the circumstances. Overbroad and lacking in probable cause and particularity, the warrants were therefore issued in violation of the Warrant Clause of the Fourth Amendment. E. The Exclusionary Rule: the Good Faith Exception and Severability The government contends that the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule makes suppression of the data seized from Mr. Burns’s phones unnecessary. In the alternative, the government argues that the invalid portions of the search warrants should be severed from the valid portions and that only the fruits of the invalid portions should be suppressed. We are not persuaded by either argument. 34 “It has long been the law that evidence collected in violation of the Fourth Amendment is considered ‘fruit of the poisonous tree’ and generally may not be used by the government to prove a defendant’s guilt.” Hooks v. United States, 208 A.3d 741, 750 (D.C. 2019) (quoting Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 488 (1963)). One exception to this general rule is the so-called “good faith exception” to the exclusionary rule, created in United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (1984). The Supreme Court held in Leon that evidence seized pursuant to a search warrant subsequently determined to be invalid is not subject to exclusion from the government’s case-in-chief if the officers who executed the warrant acted in objectively reasonable reliance on the issuing magistrate’s finding of probable cause. Id. at 922. The Court reasoned that where the officers have acted in an objectively reasonable manner, exclusion of the evidence does not deter unlawful police conduct and any legitimate benefit of the exclusionary rule’s application is outweighed by the substantial cost to society of suppressing reliable evidence. Id. at 915-22. The Supreme Court stressed in Leon that the newly-created exception to the exclusionary rule is based on an “objective” standard of reasonableness. Id. at 919 n.20. Essential to the objective nature of the inquiry is the expectation that law enforcement officers “have a reasonable knowledge of what the law prohibits.” Id. 35 (citing United States v. Peltier, 422 U.S. 531, 542 (1975)). “The key to the exclusionary rule’s effectiveness as a deterrent lies . . . in the impetus it has provided to police training programs that make officers aware of the limits imposed by the [F]ourth [A]mendment and emphasize the need to operate within those limits.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Evidence obtained pursuant to an invalid search warrant thus remains subject to suppression “if it can be said that the law enforcement officer had knowledge, or may properly be charged with knowledge, that the search was unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment.” Id. at 919 (quoting Peltier, 422 U.S. at 542). Ultimately, the inquiry comes down to “whether a reasonably well trained officer,” reasonably knowledgeable about what the law prohibits, “would have known that the search was illegal despite the magistrate’s authorization.” Id. at 922 n.23. The good faith exception, moreover, is itself subject to several exceptions expressly recognized in Leon. Specifically, the good faith exception is inapplicable where (1) the magistrate who issued the warrant “was misled by information in an affidavit that the affiant knew was false or would have known was false except for [the affiant’s] reckless disregard of the truth”; (2) the issuing magistrate “wholly abandoned his [neutral and detached] judicial role”; (3) the affidavit submitted in support of the warrant was “so lacking in indicia of probable 36 cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable”; or (4) the warrant was “so facially deficient — i.e., in failing to particularize the place to be searched or the things to be seized — that the executing officers [could not] reasonably presume it to be valid.” Id. at 923 (quoting Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 611 (1975) (Powell, J., concurring in part)). In each of these circumstances, suppression of any evidence seized pursuant to the invalid warrant is an appropriate remedy because the officer executing the warrant “will have no reasonable grounds for believing that the warrant was properly issued.” Id. The federal courts have consistently viewed “bare bones” search warrant affidavits as fitting squarely within the third exception to the good faith exception recognized in Leon. See, e.g., Griffith, 867 F.3d at 1278-79 (declining to apply the good faith exception to evidence seized pursuant to a “bare bones” affidavit); Underwood, 725 F.3d at 1085 (equating a “bare bones” affidavit with an affidavit “so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable” (quoting Leon, 468 U.S. at 923)); United States v. Craig, 861 F.2d 818, 821 (5th Cir. 1988) (referring to the third Leon exception as the “bare bones affidavit exception”). We agree with this view and adopt it as part of our analysis. And given our earlier conclusion that the affidavits submitted here 37 were bare bones (or less), we conclude, on this ground alone, that the good faith exception provides the government no refuge from the exclusionary rule. There is more in the record, however, that precludes application of the good faith exception in this case. As discussed above, Detective Littlejohn prepared the warrants using the boilerplate language of a template and made no effort to tailor their scope to the facts of the case or the slender showings of probable cause made in the supporting affidavits. The result was a pair of search warrants of truly extreme overbreadth — warrants that authorized a search of everything on both phones and listed internet browsing histories, web search terms, and photographs among the categories of items to be seized, even though, as the detective later acknowledged, he had no information that any such data related to the death of Mr. Osuchukwu. Indeed, the detective’s knowledge at the time he submitted the warrants that Mr. Burns was not a suspect made the existence of any nexus between the great majority of the data on the phones and the crime under investigation even more unlikely. These were obviously deficient warrants issued more than a year after the Supreme Court’s decision in Riley, and any reasonably well-trained police officer with a reasonable knowledge of what the Fourth Amendment prohibits would have 38 known they were invalid notwithstanding their approval by a judge. The Metropolitan Police Department had an obligation to make its officers aware of the limits imposed by the Fourth Amendment and to emphasize the need to operate within those limits, but that training responsibility appears to have gone unfulfilled. For all of these reasons, the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule does not apply. The government’s severance argument fares no better. The government cites United States v. Sells, 463 F.3d 1148, 1154-55 (10th Cir. 2006), for the proposition that in certain circumstances a trial judge may sever the valid and invalid portions of a search warrant and allow the government to present any evidence seized pursuant to the valid portions while suppressing all evidence obtained pursuant to the invalid portions. Mr. Burns agrees that Sells provides the proper framework for our analysis but argues that the government cannot satisfy its requirements. We briefly addressed the severability doctrine in United States v. Ketterman, 276 A.2d 243, 246-47 (D.C. 1971), and held there that the partial invalidity of a search warrant does not necessarily require the suppression of all evidence seized pursuant to the warrant. Instead, we stated, there are some situations in which a 39 partially invalid warrant can be severed and evidence seized pursuant to its valid portions admitted. Id. (quoting Aday v. Superior Court of Alameda County, 362 P.2d 47, 52 (Cal. 1961)). Ketterman, however, did not define the requirements for a severance, and we have not revisited the severability doctrine in the nearly fifty years since the decision was issued. In the meantime, Sells has prescribed a three-part test under which severance is available only if there are valid portions of an otherwise invalid search warrant that (1) “describe[] with sufficient particularity items to be seized for which there is probable cause,” 463 F.3d at 1156; (2) are “distinguishable from the invalid portions,” id. at 1158 (internal quotation marks omitted); and (3) “make up the greater part of the warrant,” id. (internal quotation marks omitted). There has been some disagreement within the federal courts over the specifics of the third element of the Sells test. See Cassady v. Goering, 567 F.3d 628, 657 (10th Cir. 2009) (McConnell, J., dissenting) (arguing that the valid parts of the warrant should have to be merely “not insignificant” rather than predominant). But all agree that the first two conditions delineated in Sells must be met; and as to the third, it bears noting that we felt it important to “emphasize” in Ketterman “that warrants essentially general in character may not be saved by minor items described with requisite particularity.” 276 A.2d at 247 n.6. 40 We need not determine the precise contours of the severability doctrine — or to choose sides in the debate over the third element of the Sells test — because the government cannot show that the warrants for Mr. Burns’s phones satisfied either of the first two elements. The warrants did not specifically authorize a search for Mr. Burns’s text messages with Mr. Osuchukwu on November 14, 2015 or for any of the other discrete items for which the affidavits established probable cause. Thus, no portion of the warrants described with sufficient particularity (or even mentioned) any of the items that could have been permissible subjects of a search, and the warrants made no distinction between those few items and the broad and unsupported categories of data included within the warrants’ templatebased language. The warrants therefore had no valid portions that could be properly severed under any construction of the severability doctrine. F. The Trial Judge’s Role In denying Mr. Burns’s pretrial motion to suppress, the trial judge stated that he had no authority to overrule the warrant judge’s decision to issue the warrants for Mr. Burns’s phones (and that he saw no problem with the warrants in any 41 event). This was an inaccurate statement of the role of a trial judge considering a motion to suppress evidence seized pursuant to a warrant issued by another judge. The trial judge is responsible for deciding all pretrial motions to suppress, see D.C. Code § 23-104(a)(2) (2012 Repl.); Super. Ct. Crim. R. 12(d), including those seeking the suppression of evidence seized pursuant to search warrants. In carrying out this responsibility, the trial judge plays an indispensable role in the criminal process. No matter how awkward it might be to review the work of a colleague, the trial judge has an obligation to conduct a meaningful review of the validity of the warrant in dispute and the clear authority to come to a contrary conclusion from that reached by the issuing judge. As the Supreme Court stated in Gates, “courts must continue to conscientiously review the sufficiency of affidavits on which warrants are issued” to make sure, in each case, that the action of the issuing judge was not “a mere ratification of the bare conclusions of others.” 462 U.S. at 239.