Opinion ID: 4557157
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Warrants and Their Supporting Affidavits

Text: Metropolitan Police Department Detective Lee Littlejohn applied to the Superior Court on November 25, 2015 for search warrants for two cell phones seized from Mr. Burns on the day after the shooting. One of the cell phones was an LG, the other an Alcatel One Touch. The search warrants and their supporting affidavits were identical in scope and substance, differing only in the identification of the phone to be searched pursuant to each. The warrant for the LG, along with its supporting affidavit, is reproduced in full in the appendix to this opinion. Under the heading “PROBABLE CAUSE,” Detective Littlejohn stated in the warrant affidavits that police went to 2958 Second Street, S.E., Apt. 23 on Sunday, November 15, 2015 in response to a report of an unconscious person. On arrival, police found Mr. Osuchukwu dead on the living room floor, the apparent victim of a shooting. Also present in the apartment were Mr. Burns’s mother, Mr. Burns, and a cousin — identified in the affidavits, respectively, as W-1, W-2, and W-3. 8 As relayed in the affidavits, Mr. Burns’s mother (W-1) told police that she lived in Apt. 23 but had left home on Friday, November 13, 2015 to spend the weekend with family. She stated that Mr. Burns and Mr. Osuchukwu were best friends and that Mr. Osuchukwu had arrived in the District of Columbia from California at some point on Saturday, November 14, 2015. She said she returned to her apartment on November 15, 2015 with Mr. Burns and his cousin and found Mr. Osuchukwu on the floor, unconscious and unresponsive, as soon as they opened the door. She called 911. The affidavits next summarized a police interview of Mr. Burns (W-2): Homicide Detectives on the scene spoke briefly to Witness #2, hereafter referred to as W-2. W-2 stated that family members collectively gathered money and purchased the decedent an airline ticket to Washington, D.C. W-2 stated IT exchanged text messages with the decedent throughout the day. W-2 stayed at the apartment waiting for the decedent’s arrival. According to W-2, the last communications via text with decedent was around 7:30 p.m. W-2 decided to leave the apartment to meet with friends and left the apartment door unlocked so that the decedent could gain access to the apartment. W-2 didn’t return to the apartment until the following day. Detectives attempted to ask W-2 additional questions, but W-2 refused to provide any additional information. W-2 was found to be in possession of two cellular telephones at the time, which were seized pending the issuance of a D.C. Superior Court search warrant to have them processed. 9 The affidavits also recounted an interview of Mr. Burns’s cousin (W-3), who told police he spoke with Mr. Burns by phone on the night of November 14, 2015. The cousin stated that Mr. Burns told him he had been expecting Mr. Osuchukwu to arrive at the apartment but had gone out and left the door unlocked when Mr. Osuchukwu did not show up. The cousin stated further that he and Mr. Burns met up later on the night of November 14, 2015 at a woman’s house in Southeast D.C. When asked to check his cell phone for the specific time of his call with Mr. Burns on the night of November 14, 2015, the cousin appeared to have difficulty providing the information. Further investigation, summarized in the affidavits, showed that an occupant of another apartment in the building called 911 at 8:53 on the night of November 14, 2015 to report the sound of gunshots. In the call, the neighbor said she heard six gunshots followed by a woman’s voice and a person running out of the building. The neighbor said she ran to her window and looked outside but saw no one. The affidavits also stated that police obtained and executed an emergency search warrant for Apt. 23 on the night of November 15, 2015. The search of the apartment led to the discovery of a plastic bag containing mail matter with Mr. 10 Osuchukwu’s name on it and the cord of a cell phone charger. Mr. Osuchukwu’s wallet and cell phone were not found, however, even though another witness, referred to in the affidavits as W-4, told police that Mr. Osuchukwu always had his cell phone and wallet with him when he traveled. Finally, the affidavits reported that an autopsy performed on November 16, 2015 found the cause of death to be multiple gunshot wounds to the torso and the manner of death to be a homicide. Based exclusively on the foregoing information set forth in the affidavits, Detective Littlejohn asserted that there was probable cause to believe the phones seized from Mr. Burns contained evidence related to Mr. Osuchukwu’s murder: It is your Affiant’s belief that there is probable cause that evidence related to this homicide may be contained in the [“LG”] [“Alcatel One Touch”] cellular telephone device. It is also your Affiant’s belief that obtaining the phone information requested is the least intrusive means of establishing namely, but not limited to, who possessed or used the device, the subscriber and owner information, the cell phone device phone number, incoming and outgoing calls, contact list, all existing voice mail and text messages, and videos, photographs and tweets contained within the described cellular telephone. Furthermore, it[] is your Affiant’s belief that this information could establish the whereabouts of W-2 [Mr. Burns] and W-3 [Mr. Burns’s cousin] cellular telephones on the night and time of the murder and help identify 11 potential witnesses, suspects and confederates yet unknown. Each of the requested search warrants had two attachments. Attachment A specified the cell phone to be searched and stated that the warrant “authorize[d] the forensic examination of the Device for the purpose of identifying the electronically stored information described in Attachment B.” Attachment B listed the categories of data to be seized from each of the phones: 1. All records on the Device described in Attachment A that relate to violations of D.C. Code, Section 222201 [the first-degree murder statute], including:
homicide that occurred on or about November 15, 2015;
owner/possessor, and or owner/possessor’s friends[,] acquaintances, and/or relatives; c. any information recording the owner/possessor’s schedule or travel or location from October 1 to November 16, 2015; 2. Evidence of user attribution showing who used or owned the Device at the time the things described in this warrant were created, edited, or deleted, such as logs, texts, tweets, phonebooks, saved usernames and passwords, documents, and browsing history; 3. Records of Internet activity, including firewall logs, caches, browser history and cookies, “bookmarked” or “favorite” web pages, search terms that the user 12 entered into any Internet search engine, and records of user-typed web addresses. Attachment B also specified that the terms “records” and “information” were to be broadly construed: As used above, the terms “records” and “information” include all of the foregoing items of evidence in whatever form and by whatever means they may have been created or stored, including any form of computer or electronic storage (such as flash memory or other media that can store data) and any photographic form. A Superior Court judge (the warrant judge) approved the requested warrants, without modification, on November 25, 2015.