Opinion ID: 2770748
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Cell Phone Records

Text: Any error in the district court’s failure to suppress the cell phone records was harmless. Salazar pleaded guilty to being a member of a drug conspiracy, a charge that was amply supported by other evidence. To find guilt of conspiracy, the government need only prove “an agreement to accomplish an illegal purpose.” United States v. Jackson, 167 F.3d 1280, 1285 (9th Cir. 1999). Here, evidence that Salazar agreed to smuggle drugs is ample: the narcotics were found in the car that 3 Salazar owned, directly under his seat, and he appeared to be feigning sleep throughout the entire stop (including at secondary inspection), a practice which the attending Border Patrol agent identified as often used to avoid inspection. Given the strength of this evidence, any error in admitting the cell phone records is therefore harmless. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 52(a). Salazar suggests that we follow the Tenth Circuit’s approach in United States v. Benard, 680 F.3d 1206 (10th Cir. 2012). Under Benard, harmless error is applied to the question of “whether there is a reasonable possibility that the error contributed to the plea,” which is a difficult task because “a defendant’s decision to plead guilty may be based on any factor inside or outside the record.” Id. at 1213 (quoting People v. Grant, 380 N.E.2d 257, 264 (N.Y. 1978)) (internal quotation marks omitted). We have not adopted this approach in the conditional plea context. See, e.g., Cedano-Arellano, 332 F.3d at 573-74 (applying harmless error analysis to an appellant's conditional guilty plea when the existence of other evidence would not have changed the outcome of a motion to suppress); United States v. Davis, 530 F.3d 1069, 1083-84 (9th Cir. 2008) (same). Even accepting Salazar’s suggestion, however, there is little evidence to suggest that he might not have pleaded guilty had the cell phone records been suppressed. Suppression of the cell phone records 4 was mentioned nearly as an afterthought during the suppression hearing, and nothing suggests that their content (which remains unknown) would have played a significant role in the government’s case. Salazar raises a number of additional arguments, none of which is persuasive. Therefore, I would affirm. 5