Opinion ID: 181032
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Good-Faith Reliance

Text: Even though the government's search of Warshak's emails violated the Fourth Amendment, the emails are not subject to the exclusionary remedy if the officers relied in good faith on the SCA to obtain them. See Krull, 480 U.S. at 349-50, 107 S.Ct. 1160. In Krull, the Supreme Court noted that the exclusionary rule's purpose of deterring law enforcement officers from engaging in unconstitutional conduct would not be furthered by holding officers accountable for mistakes of the legislature. Ibid. Thus, even if a statute is later found to be unconstitutional, an officer cannot be expected to question the judgment of the legislature. Ibid. However, an officer cannot be said to have acted in good-faith reliance upon a statute if its provisions are such that a reasonable officer should have known that the statute was unconstitutional. Id. at 355, 107 S.Ct. 1160. Naturally, Warshak argues that the provisions of the SCA at issue in this case were plainly unconstitutional. He argues that any reasonable law enforcement officer would have understood that a warrant based on probable cause would be required to compel the production of private emails. In making this argument, he leans heavily on Warshak I, which opined that the SCA permits agents to engage in searches that clearly do not comport with the Fourth Amendment. 490 F.3d at 477. However, we disagree that the SCA is so conspicuously unconstitutional as to preclude good-faith reliance. As we noted in Warshak II, [t]he Stored Communications Act has been in existence since 1986 and to our knowledge has not been the subject of any successful Fourth Amendment challenges, in any context, whether to § 2703(d) or to any other provision. 532 F.3d at 531. Furthermore, given the complicated thicket of issues that we were required to navigate when passing on the constitutionality of the SCA, it was not plain or obvious that the SCA was unconstitutional, and it was therefore reasonable for the government to rely upon the SCA in seeking to obtain the contents of Warshak's emails. [17] But the good-faith reliance inquiry does not end with the facial validity of the statute at issue. In Krull, the Supreme Court hinted that the good-faith exception does not apply if the government acted outside the scope of the statute on which it purported to rely. 480 U.S. at 360 n. 17, 107 S.Ct. 1160. It should be noted that this portion of the Krull Court's opinion was merely dicta, and it appears that we have yet to pass on the question. However, it seems evident that an officer's failure to adhere to the boundaries of a given statute should preclude him from relying upon it in the face of a constitutional challenge. [18] Once the officer steps outside the scope of an unconstitutional statute, the mistake is no longer the legislature's, but the officer's. See ibid. (In that context, the relevant actors are not legislators or magistrates, but police officers who concededly are engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime. (citation and internal quotation marks omitted)). Therefore, use of the exclusionary rule is once again efficacious in deterring officers from engaging in conduct that violates the Constitution. Ibid. Warshak argues that the government violated several provisions of the SCA and should therefore be precluded from arguing good-faith reliance. First, Warshak argues that the government violated the SCA's notice provisions. Under § 2703(b)(1)(B), the government must provide notice to an account holder if it seeks to compel the disclosure of his emails through either a § 2703(b) subpoena or a § 2703(d) order. However, § 2705 permits the government to delay notification in certain situations. The initial period of delay is 90 days, but the government may seek to extend that period in 90-day increments. In this case, the government issued both a § 2703(b) subpoena and a § 2703(d) order to NuVox, seeking disclosure of Warshak's emails. At the time, the government made the requisite showing that notice should be delayed. However, the government did not seek to renew the period of delay. In all, the government failed to inform Warshak of either the subpoena or the order for over a year. Conceding that it violated the notice provisions, the government argues that such violations are irrelevant to the issue of whether it reasonably relied on the SCA in obtaining the contents of Warshak's emails. We agree. As the government notes, the violations occurred after the emails had been obtained. Thus, the mistakes at issue had no bearing on the constitutional violations. Because the exclusionary rule was designed to deter constitutional violations, we decline to invoke it in this situation. But Warshak does not hang his hat exclusively on the government's violations of the SCA's notice provisions. He also argues that the government exceeded its authority under another SCA provision § 2703(f)by requesting NuVox to engage in prospective preservation of his future emails. [19] Under § 2703(f), [a] provider of wire or electronic communication services or a remote computing service, upon the request of a governmental entity, shall take all necessary steps to preserve records and other evidence in its possession pending the issuance of a court order or other process. 18 U.S.C. § 2703(f) (emphasis added). Warshak argues that this statute permits only retrospective preservationin other words, preservation of emails already in existence. He notes that the Department of Justice (DOJ) generally agrees with his construction of the statute, pointing to the DOJ's own computer-surveillance manual, which states: [Section] 2703(f) letters should not be used prospectively to order providers to preserve records not yet created. If agents want providers to record information about future electronic communications, they should comply with the [Wiretap Act and the Pen/Trap statute]. [20] Ultimately, however, this statutory violation, whether it occurred or not, [21] is irrelevant to the issue of good-faith reliance. The question here is whether the government relied in good faith on § 2703(b) and § 2703(d) to obtain copies of Warshak's emails. True, the government might not have been able to gain access to the emails without the prospective preservation request, as it was NuVox's practice to delete all emails once they were downloaded to the account holder's computer. Thus, in a sense, the government's use of § 2703(f) was a but-for cause of the constitutional violation. But the actual violation at issue was obtaining the emails, and the government did not rely on § 2703(f) specifically to do that. Instead, the government relied on § 2703(b) and § 2703(d). The proper inquiry, therefore, is whether the government violated either of those provisions, and the preservation request is of no consequence to that inquiry. Warshak's next argument is that the government violated § 2703(d) by failing to provide any particularized factual basis when seeking an order for disclosure. Under § 2703(d), such an order shall issue only if the governmental entity offers specific and articulable facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the contents of a wire or electronic communication ... are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation. To the extent that he is arguing that the government's application was insufficient, Warshak is wrong. The government's application indicated that it was investigating a complex, large-scale mail and wire fraud operation based in Cincinnati, Ohio. The application also indicated that interviews of current and former employees of the target company suggest that electronic mail is a vital communication tool that has been used to perpetuate the fraudulent conduct. Additionally, the application observed that various sources [have verified] that NuVox provides electronic communications services to certain individual(s) [under] investigation. In light of these statements, it is clear that the application was, in fact, supported by specific and articulable facts, especially given the diminished standard that applies to § 2703(d) applications. See United States v. Perrine, 518 F.3d 1196, 1202 (10th Cir.2008) (noting that the `specific and articulable facts' standard derives from the Supreme Court's decision in Terry ); Warshak I, 490 F.3d at 463 (The parties agree that the standard of proof for a court order'specific and articulable facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the contents ... or records ... are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation'falls short of probable cause.). Finally, Warshak argues that a finding of good-faith reliance is improper because the government presented the magistrate with an erroneous definition of the term electronic storage. As noted above, if an email is in electronic storage for less than 180 days, the government may not compel its disclosure without a warrant. 18 U.S.C. § 2703(a). In applying for the subpoena and the order that eventually resulted in the disclosure of Warshak's NuVox emails, the government suggested to the magistrate that an email is not in electronic storage if it has already been accessed, viewed, or downloaded. Warshak argues that this definition of electronic storage does not comport with the Ninth Circuit's decision in Theofel v. Farey-Jones, 359 F.3d 1066, 1071 (9th Cir.2004), which held that prior access is irrelevant to whether the [emails] at issue were in electronic storage. Warshak further argues that, because the government failed to mention the Ninth Circuit's definition, it usurped the court's function to determine whether an email ... [is] in `electronic storage[.]' Appellant's Br. at 38. As an initial matter, it is manifest that the decisions of the Ninth Circuit are not binding on courts in this circuit. It therefore cannot be said that the government somehow violated § 2703 by failing to cite an out-of-circuit decision that it thought to be wrongly decided. Incidentally, the government is not alone in thinking that the Ninth Circuit's definition of electronic storage is incorrect. One commentator has noted that Theofel is quite implausible and hard to square with the statutory test. Kerr, A User's Guide to the Stored Communications Act, 72 Geo. Wash. L.Rev. at 1217; see also United States v. Weaver, 636 F.Supp.2d 769, 773 (C.D.Ill. 2009) (Previously opened emails stored by Microsoft for Hotmail users are not in electronic storage, and the Government can obtain copies of such emails using a trial subpoena.). Furthermore, it does a disservice to the magistrate judge to suggest that the government usurped the role of the court. The government's application did include a proposed definition of the term electronic storage. That does not mean, however, that the magistrate judge unhesitatingly received that definition, and, as the government notes, the magistrate presumably [had] the opportunity to consider and review relevant precedent. Appellee's Br. at 117. Consequently, we find that, although the government violated the Fourth Amendment, the exclusionary rule does not apply, as the government relied in good faith on § 2703(b) and § 2703(d) to access the contents of Warshak's emails. [22]