Court Opinion

ID: 9960054
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-04-15 08:10:11.192293+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:19:06.570763
License: Public Domain

In the
              Court of Appeals
      Second Appellate District of Texas
               at Fort Worth
            ___________________________

                 No. 02-22-00291-CR
                 No. 02-22-00292-CR
                 No. 02-22-00293-CR
                 No. 02-22-00294-CR
            ___________________________

            CESAR MARTINEZ, Appellant

                           V.

                THE STATE OF TEXAS

        On Appeal from Criminal District Court No. 4
                   Tarrant County, Texas
Trial Court Nos. 1666710D, 1666715D, 1666720D, 1666725D

         Before Bassel, Womack, and Wallach, JJ.
                Opinion by Justice Bassel
                                      OPINION

                                   I. Introduction

      Officers may open a cell phone abandoned at a crime scene to view non-

electronic identifying information, such as the phone’s international mobile

equipment identification (IMEI) number, and then use that identifying information to

obtain a search warrant for the phone’s digital data. See, e.g., Ward v. Lee, No. 19-CV-

03986 (KAM), 2020 WL 6784195, at *8 (E.D.N.Y. Nov. 18, 2020) (mem. & order);

United States v. Pacheco, No. 11-CR-121-A, 2015 WL 3402832, at *6 (W.D.N.Y. May 27,

2015) (decision & order).

      Police linked Appellant Cesar Martinez to an abandoned cell phone after

obtaining the phone’s IMEI number and then using it to apply for a search warrant of

the phone’s digital data. The phone’s digital data, in addition to other evidence, led to

Martinez’s convictions by a jury in four cases of aggravated robbery,1 as well as—in

one of the four cases—burglary of a habitation with intent to commit robbery and

      1
         Martinez was charged with, on or about October 18, 2020, intentionally or
knowingly, while in the course of committing theft of property and with intent to
obtain or maintain control of said property, threatening or placing Robert Quintero
(trial court cause number 1666710D; appellate court cause number 02-22-00291-CR),
Jesus Flores (trial court cause number 1666720D; appellate court cause number 02-
22-00293-CR), and David Sanchez (trial court cause number 1666725D; appellate
court cause number 02-22-00294-CR) in fear of imminent bodily injury or death while
using or exhibiting a deadly weapon (a firearm), and causing bodily injury to Rene
Flores by striking him with a firearm (trial court cause number 1666715D; appellate
court cause number 02-22-00292-CR). See Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 29.03(a)–(b).

       Because Jesus and Rene, who are cousins, share the same last name, we will
refer to each complainant by his first name to avoid confusion.

                                           2
impersonating a public servant.2 The jury assessed Martinez’s punishment at forty-

five years’ confinement for each aggravated-robbery conviction and for the burglary

conviction, see Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 12.32 (first-degree-felony punishment), and ten

years’ confinement for the impersonation offense, see id. § 12.34 (third-degree-felony

punishment). The trial court ordered the sentences to run concurrently.

      In three points, Martinez argues that the trial court erred by failing to suppress

the evidence from the cell-phone search and by failing to suppress an impermissibly

suggestive photo lineup and that these failures harmed him. We disagree. Because

the trial court did not err by denying Martinez’s motion to suppress the cell-phone

evidence and because the cell-phone evidence and other evidence at trial unrelated to

the photo lineup revealed Martinez’s identity, even assuming that the trial court

should have suppressed the photo lineup, Martinez was not harmed by its failure to

do so. See Tex. R. App. P. 44.2. Accordingly, we affirm the trial court’s judgments.

                                   II. Background

A. The criminal episode

      On October 17, 2020, housemates Roberto, Jesus, David, and Rene enjoyed a

barbecue together after work. Around 2:30 a.m., after Roberto, Rene, and David had

gone to bed, Jesus was in the living room watching TV when a black-clad man and

      2
        In Rene’s case, Martinez was charged with committing burglary of a habitation
(the home shared by the four complainants) and impersonating a public servant (a
police officer). See Tex. Penal Code Ann. §§ 30.02(a), (d), 37.11; see also id. § 3.02(a)
(stating that a defendant may be prosecuted in a single criminal action for all offenses
arising out of the same criminal episode).

                                           3
woman, wearing masks and fake badges and bearing a fake deportation order,

knocked on the front door, claimed to be police officers, demanded entry into the

house, and—once inside—zip-tied all four men. Jesus and Roberto saw a gun at the

male intruder’s waist when he entered the house; Jesus testified that the female

intruder was also armed.

      The occupants quickly realized that the intruders were not police officers, and

Jesus and Rene ripped through the poor-quality zip ties. Jesus shoved the masked

man into a television, breaking it, and Jesus and Roberto followed the woman, who

had gone into a bedroom. During the time it took for them to break open the

bedroom door, the woman stole money and other items and then escaped by breaking

a window. Roberto and Jesus attempted to pursue her but were unsuccessful.

      When they returned to the house, David was heading outside with his cell

phone to call the police, and Rene was still inside, fighting with the man, whose mask

was removed during the struggle. In addition to losing his mask, the man also

dropped his fake badge; the fake deportation order; a balaclava, which a witness

described as “a thing that you wear over your head, and you can only see their eyes”; a

baseball cap; and a cell phone—all of which the police later collected at the scene.

      The fight ended when the man hit Rene in the head with the gun, dropping

Rene to the ground. Rene testified that after he fell, the man pointed the gun at him,

and he thought the man was going to shoot him. Rene closed his eyes, and when he

opened them, the man was gone.

                                           4
      Roberto and Jesus were on their way to help Rene when the man, still holding

the gun, left the house. Roberto testified that the man pointed the gun at him and

told him to move aside. Jesus was behind Roberto, and he saw the man’s face for a

few seconds before the man took off running. When the police arrived,3 Rene

directed them to the cell phone dropped by the male assailant.

      Over Martinez’s running objection, Rene testified that he identified Martinez

from the photo lineup and at trial but said that he was only 80% sure in both cases of

his identification because of a facial hair difference 4 and the fact that Martinez’s hair

was longer at trial but had been short, a “buzz cut,” on the night of the robbery.

B. Suppression testimony and related evidence

      Martinez moved to suppress “all evidence resulting from the illegal search of

[the] cell phone” that the police seized at the crime scene on October 18, 2020, as well

as all physical evidence and testimony relating to that search or obtained as a result of

information gained from the search. Evidence found on the cell phone included the

identification of Martinez as its owner, his selfie,5 an image of a fake search warrant

      3
       The police were called at around 2:39 a.m.
      4
        Outside the jury’s presence, Jesus identified Martinez as the robber but said
that he had not been able to identify him from a photo lineup because of a difference
in Martinez’s facial hair. The trial court sustained Martinez’s objection to Jesus’s
identification.

      A selfie is a self-portrait photograph. See Morgan v. State, No. 07-22-00300-CR,
      5

2023 WL 6976919, at *1 (Tex. App.—Amarillo Oct. 23, 2023, pet. ref’d) (mem. op.,
not designated for publication); see also selfie, https://www.merriam-

                                            5
created on October 12, 2020; information on how to “make your own custom fake

legal forms” accessed on October 15, 2020; an image of a fake deportation order like

the one found at the scene but dated October 15, 2020, instead of October 17, 2020; a

poorly aligned photograph of a broken television from October 18, 2020; and notes

about police report #200032024, dated April 24, 2020. 6

      At the suppression hearing, 7 Fort Worth Police Detective Elias Reyes testified

that he had written the search warrant for the cell phone and, when asked to briefly

describe the circumstances under which the police seized the phone, he testified,

“[T]he victims for this offense said the suspect’s phone fell out of his pocket, and

none of the victims claimed the phone.         They said it was the suspect’s phone,

webster.com/dictionary/selfie (last visited Apr. 2, 2024) (“an image that includes
oneself . . . and is taken of oneself using a digital camera especially for posting on
social networks”).
      6
       During trial, a police officer testified about an April 24, 2020 car accident
involving Martinez and another driver, memorialized in report #200032024, and his
body-camera footage from that day showed Martinez making notes about the report
on a cell phone.
      7
       Martinez also moved to suppress his in-court identification “due to
impermissibly suggestive pre-trial identification procedures” that would give rise “to a
substantial likelihood of misidentification of [him] at trial,” and the trial court heard
both suppression motions before trial. Because we conclude below that the trial court
did not err by denying suppression of the cell-phone evidence, which directly tied
Martinez to the offense and contained his selfie—allowing the jury to identify him
from his selfie and his trial appearance without reference to the photo lineup or
testimony about it—any error by denying the photo lineup suppression motion was
harmless.

                                           6
abandoned in the house.”8 He took the phone to his office and kept it charged. He

used a SIM 9 tool, like a paperclip, to access the cell phone’s SIM tray so that he could

obtain the cell phone’s IMEI number, which is a cell phone’s unique serial number.

He used the IMEI number to identify the phone with particularity10 in his warrant

application.11 He did not have to access—and did not access—the cell phone’s

software to obtain the IMEI number.

      8
        Before Detective Reyes arrived, another police officer had put the phone into
“airplane mode.” Airplane mode “is where it takes the phone off the cellular
network” to prevent someone from erasing the phone from a remote location.
      9
       SIM is an acronym for subscriber identity module. State v. Moore, 839 S.E.2d
882, 885 (S.C. 2020).
      10
        The Fourth Amendment mandates 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.
The Fourth Amendment’s “particularity requirement” assures the individual whose
property is searched of the lawful authority of the executing officer, his need to
search, and the limits of his powers to search. Bonds v. State, 403 S.W.3d 867, 874
(Tex. Crim. App. 2013). Among other things, one of the constitutional objectives of
requiring a “particular” description includes minimizing the danger of mistakenly
searching the property of an innocent bystander or property owner. Id. at 874–75.
      11
         See United States v. Wells, No. 20 CR. 633 (NRB), 2023 WL 2223474, at *8
(S.D.N.Y. Feb. 23, 2023) (mem. & order) (“Indeed, based on case law in the Circuit,
law[-]enforcement officers appear to commonly list cell phones’ IMEI numbers on
their corresponding search warrant applications.”); see also Harmel v. State, 597 S.W.3d
943, 963 (Tex. App.—Austin 2020, no pet.) (noting that the warrant described the
phone by its make, model, serial number, and IMEI number and these descriptors—
combined with accurate descriptions of the phone’s location, owner, and color—
permitted law-enforcement officers to reasonably locate the phone to be searched and
to distinguish it from others); Farek v. State, No. 01-18-00385-CR, 2019 WL 2588106,
at *8 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] June 25, 2019, pet. ref’d) (mem. op., not
designated for publication) (noting that search warrant’s supporting affidavit

                                           7
      On cross-examination, Detective Reyes agreed that he had removed the cell

phone’s cover before inserting the SIM tool. He contended that he could enter the

physical part of the cell phone before getting a warrant because the cell phone had

been abandoned. He conceded that to obtain the search warrant, he was not required

to have the IMEI number and that he could have removed the phone from its case,

photographed it, and included the photograph in the warrant application. He agreed

that there was no life-threatening situation requiring him to open the cell phone and

that no one had reported to him that it had been stolen. His only information about

the cell phone had come from the complainants, who indicated that their assailant had

dropped it. Detective Reyes stated that he, personally, did not know if the phone had

been lost and did not know any of the phone’s “backstory” other than what he had

been told by the complainants and other officers.

      During his redirect examination, Detective Reyes contended that there was no

other way—besides the IMEI number—to distinguish the cell phone from other cell

phones of the same make, model, and color and that he needed the IMEI number

because obtaining the phone’s serial number would have required him to search into

the phone’s digital data. During recross-examination, Detective Reyes agreed that he

could have waited until he had a warrant before he physically entered the phone

described phone as a “blue in color, Microsoft Lumia (Cricket) phone, Model # RM-
1073, IME[I] #357815061300596 located at the Lake Jackson Police Department
Evidence Room, located at 5 Oak Dr., Lake Jackson, Brazoria County, Texas”).

                                          8
because he had a photograph of it, because he had tagged it into evidence, and

because it was not going anywhere.

      At the hearing’s conclusion, Martinez argued that his right to be free of

unlawful searches and seizures had been violated when the police had physically

entered his phone to obtain the IMEI number and that no exception under Code of

Criminal Procedure Article 18.0215 applied.12         The prosecutor countered that

Martinez had no property interest or an insufficient property interest in the phone’s

IMEI number for standing to bring his suppression motion because he had

abandoned the phone at the crime scene and because there was no other way to

distinguish the phone from other cell phones.

      12
         On appeal, neither party mentions Article 18.0215, which provides that a
peace officer “may not search a person’s cellular telephone . . . pursuant to a lawful
arrest of the person without obtaining a warrant under this article.” Tex. Code Crim.
Proc. Ann. art. 18.0215(a). Under Article 18.0215, the phone’s owner or possessor
may consent to the search, and no warrant is required if the phone is reported stolen
by its owner or possessor or if the officer reasonably believes that the phone is in the
possession of a fugitive from justice for whom a felony-arrest warrant has been issued
or there exists an immediate life-threatening situation. Id. art. 18.0215(d).

        The statutory language makes clear that the scenario envisioned by the
legislature is that the warrant requirement applies to a search of a person’s cell phone
in the search-incident-to-arrest scenario contemplated in Riley v. California, 573 U.S.
373, 134 S. Ct. 2473 (2014), discussed below. See State v. Baldwin, 664 S.W.3d 122, 131
(Tex. Crim. App. 2022) (“Under Texas law, to search a person’s cell phone after a
lawful arrest, a peace officer must submit an application for a warrant to a magistrate.”
(emphasis added)), cert. denied, 143 S. Ct. 777 (2023); Harmel, 597 S.W.3d at 963
(“[W]hen the State seeks to search a cellphone pursuant to a lawful arrest, it must obtain
a warrant that, among other things, identifies the cell[ ]phone to be searched and
states the name of its owner or possessor.” (emphasis added)). That is not the case
before us as the phone was not searched incident to Martinez’s arrest.

                                            9
      The trial court denied the motion after observing,

      I don’t know that somebody has a right to privacy in the IMEI number
      of their phone -- it’s similar, I think, to a VIN number of a car, it’s just a
      unique identifier -- and certainly not in a piece of property abandoned at
      a crime scene, allegedly, per what the police had[,] by the suspect of the
      offense.

      During trial, Martinez’s defense counsel renewed his suppression objections,

and the trial court overruled them again and admitted the cell-phone evidence. 13

Detective Reyes testified that one of the responding police officers told him that one

of the complainants had said that the cell phone had fallen out of the robber’s pocket.

Detective Reyes used the data from the phone and all the other evidence he had

collected—including the photo lineup identification by Rene 14—to write an arrest

warrant for Martinez on December 3, 2020.

      Arlington Police Officer James May testified that later that day—December 3,

2020—his patrol car’s computer hit on a license plate with a warrant. He followed

      13
         In determining whether a trial court’s suppression decision is supported by
the record, we generally consider only evidence adduced at the hearing because the
ruling was based on it rather than on evidence introduced later. See Gutierrez v. State,
221 S.W.3d 680, 687 (Tex. Crim. App. 2007); Rachal v. State, 917 S.W.2d 799, 809
(Tex. Crim. App. 1996). But this general rule does not apply when the parties
consensually relitigate the suppression issue during trial on the merits. Gutierrez, 221
S.W.3d at 687; Rachal, 917 S.W.2d at 809. If the State raised the issue at trial either
without objection or with the defense’s subsequent participation in the inquiry, the
defendant is deemed to have elected to re-open the evidence, and we may consider
the relevant trial testimony in our review. Rachal, 917 S.W.2d at 809.
      14
        During Detective Reyes’s cross-examination, defense counsel asked about
photo lineup protocols and pointed out the differences between Martinez’s attire and
that of the five filler suspects as well as the shading differences in Martinez’s photo
from the other five photos.

                                           10
the vehicle while waiting for backup for a felony stop because the warrant was for an

aggravated robbery. He identified Martinez at trial as the vehicle’s driver. Fort Worth

police impounded the vehicle and searched it. Inside the vehicle, they found a fake

badge identical to the one that had been abandoned at the October 18, 2020 crime

scene and a purse containing Martinez’s Tarrant County inmate ID photo.

                             III. Suppression Analysis

      In his second point, Martinez complains that the trial court erred by failing to

suppress the cell-phone search results, and in part of his third point, he contends that

the failure to suppress the results harmed him. Martinez argues that the police

searched his phone without a warrant or exigent circumstances to obtain the IMEI

number and then used that information to write the search warrant affidavit for the

phone’s digital contents. The State responds that Martinez abandoned the cell phone

and that “opening the outer case of a phone left at the scene of a crime is akin to

opening a folded wallet inadvertently left by a fleeing defendant following a bank

robbery.”

A. Standard of review

      The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures

by government officials. U.S. Const. amend. IV; Wiede v. State, 214 S.W.3d 17, 24

(Tex. Crim. App. 2007).      A defendant seeking to suppress evidence on Fourth

Amendment grounds bears the initial burden to produce some evidence that the

government conducted a warrantless search or seizure that he has standing to contest.

                                          11
Rawlings v. Kentucky, 448 U.S. 98, 104–05, 100 S. Ct. 2556, 2561 (1980); State v.

Martinez, 569 S.W.3d 621, 623 (Tex. Crim. App. 2019). Once the defendant does so,

the burden shifts to the State to prove either that the search or seizure was conducted

pursuant to a warrant or, if warrantless, was otherwise reasonable. Martinez, 569

S.W.3d at 623.

B. Cell-phone evidence

       In 2014, the United States Supreme Court addressed the warrant requirement

for cell-phone evidence in Riley, which consolidated two search-incident-to-arrest

cases. See 573 U.S. at 378–81, 134 S. Ct. at 2480–82. The Court first described the

term “cell phone” as a “misleading shorthand” for a device that is a minicomputer

that can be used as a phone, camera, video player, rolodex, calendar, tape recorder,

library, diary, album, television, map, or newspaper. Id. at 393, 134 S. Ct. at 2489. It

observed that one of the most notable distinguishing features is the cell phone’s

immense storage capacity from which “[t]he sum of an individual’s private life can be

reconstructed through a thousand photographs labeled with dates, locations, and

descriptions.” Id. at 394, 134 S. Ct. at 2489.

      The Court noted that while the “categorical” search-incident-to-arrest rule

stated in United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 94 S. Ct. 467 (1973), “strikes the

appropriate balance in the context of physical objects,” it did not have much force

“with respect to digital content on cell phones” because the potential harm to officers

and the destruction of evidence present in all custodial arrests do not apply to a

                                            12
digital-data search. Id. at 386, 134 S. Ct. at 2484–85 (“A search of the information on

a cell phone bears little resemblance to the type of brief physical search considered in

Robinson.”). That is, after an officer has secured a phone and eliminated any potential

physical threats, the phone’s data can endanger no one. Id. at 387, 134 S. Ct. at 2485.

      The Court specifically declared, however, that “[l]aw enforcement officers

remain free to examine the physical aspects of a phone to ensure that it will not be

used as a weapon—say, to determine whether there is a razor blade hidden between

the phone and its case.” Id., 134 S. Ct. at 2485. Thus, a physical search, rather than a

digital search, is permitted incident to arrest. Id., 134 S. Ct. at 2485. Law enforcement

officers are also allowed to disconnect the phone from its cellular network to prevent

remote wiping by turning it off, removing its battery, or placing the phone in an

enclosure that isolates it from radio waves. Id. at 390, 134 S. Ct. at 2487.

      Otherwise, however, a warrant is generally required before a cell-phone search:

“Our answer to the question of what police must do before searching a cell phone

seized incident to arrest is . . . simple—get a warrant.” Id. at 401, 403, 134 S. Ct. at

2493, 2495.     The Court also discussed other case-specific exceptions, such as

exigency. Id. at 402, 134 S. Ct. at 2494; see Akins v. State, 573 S.W.3d 290, 296 (Tex.

App.—Beaumont 2019, pet. ref’d) (distinguishing Riley because it “did not involve the

issue of whether the defendant had abandoned the device that was searched”).

      Our Court of Criminal Appeals has also discussed the warrant requirement for

cell-phone evidence. See State v. Granville, 423 S.W.3d 399, 402 (Tex. Crim. App. 2014)

                                            13
(rejecting the prosecutor’s argument “that a modern-day cell phone is like a pair of

pants or a bag of groceries, for which a person loses all privacy protection once it is

checked into a jail property room”). In Granville, the defendant—a high school

student—was arrested for the Class C offense of causing a disturbance on a school

bus, and his cell phone was taken from him during booking and placed into the jail

property room. Id. Later that day, an officer investigating a different potential

offense retrieved the cell phone and examined its contents without first requesting a

warrant. Id. He turned on the phone and “went through it until he found the

photograph he was looking for, . . . took the phone to his office, and printed a copy

of the photograph.” Id. The defendant was later charged with the state-jail felony

offense of improper photography and sought to suppress the photograph based on

his phone’s illegal search. Id. The trial court granted his suppression motion, and the

court of appeals affirmed, as did the Court of Criminal Appeals. Id. at 402, 417.

      In reaching its conclusion that suppression was appropriate under the

circumstances, the Court of Criminal Appeals observed that while a person may have

a reasonable and legitimate expectation of privacy in his cell phone’s contents, “he

may lose that expectation under some circumstances, such as if he abandons his cell

phone, lends it to others to use, or gives his consent to its search.” Id. at 409 (internal

footnotes omitted). 15    The court also noted that without violating the Fourth

       In its reference to abandonment, the court cited United States v. Powell, 732
      15

F.3d 361, 374–75 (5th Cir. 2013), in which the defendant’s denial of ownership of a

                                            14
Amendment, “the officers could have reasonably inspected the outside of appellant’s

cell phone; they could have tested it for fingerprints or DNA material because

portions of the cell phone are routinely exposed to the public.” Id. at 416. That is,

there is a significant distinction between the cell phone’s exterior and its digital

contents. Id.

C. Non-digital intrusion

      Some federal courts have indicated that merely checking for a serial number

without intruding on digital data is not a Fourth Amendment violation. In Ward, like

the instant case, the burglary defendant dropped his cell phone at the crime scene.

2020 WL 6784195, at *1 (noting that the defendant exited the home through a

window and dropped both the cell phone and a screwdriver as he fled). The victim’s

husband told the officers at the scene that the cell phone discovered in his yard was

not his. Id. at *2. The court first noted that the phone was abandoned at the crime

scene, leaving the defendant with no reasonable expectation of privacy in the phone,

and then that “the police did not search ‘digital’ content within the cell phone[] but

rather checked the phone for its serial number, written in a space behind the battery

pack.” Id. at *8. The court concluded, “The law is clear that officers may legally open

cell phone eliminated her standing to suppress the evidence found on it, and United
States v. Lopez-Cruz, 730 F.3d 803, 808–09 (9th Cir. 2013), in which the defendant
retained standing because he made no affirmative denial of any association with the
phone. Granville, 423 S.W.3d at 409 n.28; see Akins, 573 S.W.3d at 296 (citing Granville
for the proposition that a person loses a reasonable expectation of privacy in a cell
phone if he abandons the phone).

                                          15
the battery pack of a phone to view its serial number and that this does not constitute

a Fourth Amendment violation.” Id. (referencing, among other cases, United States v.

Crumble, 878 F.3d 656, 660 (8th Cir. 2018),16 United States v. Robinson, No. 16-CR-545

(ADS) (AYS), 2019 WL 1211431, at *12 (E.D.N.Y. 2019) (report &

recommendation),17 United States v. Quashie, 162 F. Supp. 3d 135, 140 (E.D.N.Y.

2016), 18 United States v. Vega-Cervantes, No. 1:14-CR-234-WSD, 2015 WL 4877657, at

      16
         In Crumble, the court held that the defendant had abandoned his cell phone
inside a wrecked Buick after he fled the scene; he left the vehicle, with the key in the
ignition, on a stranger’s lawn, and he later denied any knowledge of the vehicle,
showing his intent to abandon it and its contents. 878 F.3d at 659–60.
      17
        In Robinson, the court denied a motion to suppress after concluding that the
burglary suspect had abandoned the cell phone when he left it on the roof landing of
the burgled second-floor apartment, near an open window, and then fled the scene.
2019 WL 1211431, at *5, *9–10, *14.
      18
        In Quashie, a burglar dropped his cell phone in the victim’s apartment. 162 F.
Supp. 3d at 140. The victim found the cell phone and called the police. Id. The
police “went into the telephone and obtained the number without obtaining a
warrant,” and, using this number, the police determined that the phone belonged to
the defendant. Id. The court noted, “If defendant’s phone was simply abandoned by
him at the apartment where the robbery occurred, he has clearly relinquished his
expectation of privacy in the property.” Id. at 141. The court observed, “By leaving
the phone behind in the apartment, the robber did not protect [it] and did not evince
an intent to maintain an expectation of privacy in it.” Id. The court concluded,
“[T]he phone was abandoned when it was left in the victim’s apartment. Once the
property was abandoned, officers were free to do the limited search of the phone.”
Id. The court held that Riley did not apply because it “outlines the standard to be
applied to a search of a cell[ ]phone incident to arrest” and “has nothing to do with an
abandoned cell[ ]phone.” Id. at 141–42.

                                          16
*16 (N.D. Ga. Aug. 13, 2015) (op. & order), 19 and Pacheco, 2015 WL 3402832, at *6); 20

see United States v. Andrade, No. 18-145-JJM-LDA, 2022 WL 179341, at *3 (D.R.I. Jan.

20, 2022) (order) (holding that the defendant’s challenge to the removal of the cell

phone’s back cover to find its serial number and to apply for a search warrant was not

an illegal warrantless search “because law enforcement already legally had the device[]

following the inventory search and [because] the law does not require a warrant when

      19
         In Vega-Cervantes, an investigator removed the battery from the defendant’s
seized cell phone to view identifying information behind the battery, turned the phone
on, and went into “memory” to identify the phone’s serial number and telephone
number. 2015 WL 4877657, at *6. He did not look into the call log, contact list, or
text messages before obtaining a search warrant. Id. The court stated that the
“minimally intrusive examination d[id] not implicate the privacy interests at issue in
Riley and was reasonable under the circumstances.” Id. at *15.
      20
         In Pacheco, after investigators seized twelve cell phones during a warrant-based
search of the defendant’s residence, one of the investigators secured the phones’
identifying numbers to include in the search warrant application. 2015 WL 3402832,
at *3–4. For three of the phones, he had to remove the back plate and the batteries to
look for unique identifying numbers. Id. at *4. The court noted that nothing in the
record indicated that the agents had conducted a search for digital data before
obtaining a search warrant. Id. at *6. Then, as to the Supreme Court’s statement in
Riley about removing a phone’s battery to prevent the remote wiping, the court stated,

      [I]f the officers can legally enter the phone without a search warrant and
      remove the battery so as to disconnect it from the network, they can
      legally enter the phone without a search warrant and remove the battery
      so as to view hard copy phone identification numbers which do not
      constitute “digital data” contained within the phone.

Id. Doing so, “at best” constituted a “minimal intrusion that d[id] not rise to the level
of a Fourth Amendment violation.” Id. at *7 (“The purpose in seeking this
information was to provide [the investigator] with information that could be used as
descriptive identifiers in his later application for a search warrant that would authorize
a search of those phones for ‘digital content’ or digital data.”).

                                           17
‘police did not search digital content within the phone[] but rather checked the phone

for its serial number, written in a space behind the battery pack’” (quoting Ward, 2020

WL 36784195, at *8)).

       Likewise, at least one state supreme court has determined that a limited search

of a SIM card to establish ownership is wholly distinct from examining a phone’s

contents. Moore, 839 S.E.2d at 886. A SIM card is “a small device [that] contains a

customer’s basic information, along with encryption data to allow a device to access a

particular carrier’s mobile network” and does not contain most of the information

available on an unlocked cell phone, thus diminishing the privacy implications

identified in Riley. Id. at 886–87. In Moore, the defendant left his flip phone at a crime

scene, and in the investigation that followed, officers removed the phone’s SIM card

to determine ownership and then obtained a warrant to search the phone’s contents.

Id. at 885.

       The court held that under these circumstances, the limited search of the SIM

card for purposes of identification was reasonable and did not contravene the Fourth

Amendment. Id. at 888. The court stated, “To the extent [the defendant] retained an

expectation of privacy in his cell phone left next to the victim’s body, that expectation

of privacy was diminished to the point that the finder could properly examine the

item in a manner limited to determining the owner.” Id.; see Oseguera-Viera v. State, 592

S.W.3d 960, 965–66 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 2019, pet. ref’d) (holding

grocery store employee-defendant’s objective expectation of privacy in his mislaid cell

                                           18
phone containing child pornography was limited by the police officer’s ability to

access the unlocked and not-password-protected cell phone—once a customer had

turned it in—to determine ownership and noting that the court was not deciding “the

extent to which an officer may review the contents of a cell phone to determine its

owner”); see also United States v. Nealis, 180 F. Supp. 3d 944, 950 (N.D. Okla. 2016) (op.

& order) (noting that “[w]hen an individual loses or mislays personal property, his or

her ‘expectation of privacy is diminished to the extent that the finder may examine

and search the lost property to determine its owner.’”); State v. Hill, 789 S.E.2d 317,

317–18 (Ga. Ct. App. 2016) (holding that defendant, who left his cell phone in the

back of a taxi before skipping out on the fare, had no reasonable expectation of

privacy in his name, date of birth, and phone number, which an investigating officer

obtained by calling 911 from the phone); State v. Green, 164 So. 3d 331, 344 (La. Ct.

App. 2015) (holding that officer’s removal of the back of defendant’s cell phone to

obtain the serial number and other identifying information was not a “search” within

the Fourth Amendment’s meaning).

D. Abandonment

      Even if opening a phone to obtain the IMEI number could have been an

otherwise improper search, Martinez still had to prove that he had a reasonable

expectation of privacy in the phone at the time of the contested search to establish

standing to bring his suppression motion. See King v. State, 670 S.W.3d 653, 657 (Tex.

                                           19
Crim. App.), cert. denied, 144 S. Ct. 386 (2023);21 see also Wiltz v. State, 595 S.W.3d 930,

934 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.]) (“[O]ne may lose a reasonable and legitimate

expectation of privacy in the contents of one’s cell phone if one abandons the

phone.”), pet. ref’d, 609 S.W.3d 543 (Tex. Crim. App. 2020).

       When a defendant voluntarily abandons property, he lacks standing to contest

the reasonableness of the search of the abandoned property. McCurley v. State, 653

S.W.3d 477, 490–91 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 2022, pet. ref’d) (holding that defendant

had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the DNA profile developed from his

abandoned trash); see United States v. Hooper, 482 F. Supp. 3d 496, 509 (E.D. Va. 2020)

(“[T]here can be nothing unlawful in the Government’s appropriation of . . .

abandoned property.”), aff’d, No. 21-4220, 2022 WL 1184181 (4th Cir. Apr. 21, 2022)

(per curiam) (not designated for publication), cert. denied, 143 S. Ct. 259 (2022). 22

       21
         King involved standing to challenge a search related to a cell phone, but not in
the context of a defendant’s having dropped the phone at a crime scene. Instead,
after the defendant was arrested, his employer’s tractor-trailer (where the defendant
lived) was searched pursuant to a warrant. 670 S.W.3d at 658. The tractor-trailer was
returned to his employer, who subsequently sent the defendant’s phone to the police
when the police realized that they had inadvertently failed to collect it during the
search. Id. The phone was searched under a separate warrant, and the defendant did
not contest that search. Id. The court held that the defendant had failed to establish
his own privacy interest in the tractor-trailer when the cell phone was seized (i.e., after
his arrest and the tractor-trailer’s return to his employer) and that he therefore lacked
standing to bring his Fourth Amendment suppression claim. Id. at 658–59.
        In Hooper, the defendant’s acts provided the inference that he had abandoned
       22

his phone. 482 F. Supp. 3d at 510. He left his phone outside on an oyster-culling
table on a pier that he did not own and where he had no reasonable expectation of
privacy. Id. He did not attempt to shield the phone from other employees or the

                                            20
Property is abandoned if (1) the defendant intended to abandon the property and (2)

his decision to abandon the property was not due to police misconduct. 23 McCurley,

653 S.W.3d at 490 (citing Swearingen v. State, 101 S.W.3d 89, 101 (Tex. Crim. App.

2003)).

       Abandonment is primarily a question of intent. McDuff v. State, 939 S.W.2d

607, 616 (Tex. Crim. App. 1997). Intent to abandon may be inferred “from words

spoken, acts done, and other objective facts and relevant circumstances.” Id. The

issue is not abandonment in the “strict property-right sense[] but rather whether the

accused ha[s] voluntarily discarded, left behind, or otherwise relinquished his interest

in the property so that he could no longer retain a reasonable expectation of privacy

with regard to it at the time of the search.” Id.; see Matthews v. State, 431 S.W.3d 596,

public on the river who might pass by it, and he made no effort to shield it from the
elements, thereby risking its destruction. Id. Other people’s later efforts to shield the
phone from theft and the elements after the defendant had left it had no effect on the
court’s analysis because “the inquiry turn[ed] on [the] [d]efendant’s intent at the time
that he walked away from the table.” Id. The defendant ran the risk that strangers
would find the phone when he left it on the table on someone else’s pier in the public
river, and “[t]he fact that strangers could so readily access his phone gives rise to an
inference of abandonment.” Id.
       23
          No seizure occurs under the Fourth Amendment when police take possession
of property that has been abandoned without police misconduct. McCurley, 653
S.W.3d at 490. Misconduct, in relation to the concept of abandonment, contemplates
illegal activity directly related to the search and seizure. Kelso v. State, 562 S.W.3d 120,
130 (Tex. App.—Texarkana 2018, pet. ref’d) (noting that any police misconduct that
occurred after the cell phone was abandoned could not have directly caused its
abandonment). No one raised police misconduct at the suppression hearing, and the
record does not reflect any police misconduct in that the police arrived at the scene
after Martinez had already fled.

                                            21
609–10 (Tex. Crim. App. 2014) (holding that the appellant intended to abandon any

expectation of privacy in the van he left behind when, while being detained, he took

off running and left the keys in the vehicle’s ignition); cf. State v. Dixon, No. 13-09-

00445-CR, 2010 WL 3419231, at *7 (Tex. App.—Corpus Christi–Edinburg Aug. 27,

2010, pet. ref’d) (mem. op., not designated for publication) (stating that the cell phone

was not abandoned when it was preceded by an unlawful act—theft of the phone—by

a third person, who later provided the phone to the police).

      At least one court—the Fourth Circuit—has stated that abandonment of a

phone should not be “casually inferred” because people lose or misplace their cell

phones all the time and that the simple loss of a cell phone does not entail the loss of

a reasonable expectation of privacy. United States v. Small, 944 F.3d 490, 503 (4th Cir.

2019). In Small, officers found a cell phone as they searched for the defendant, who

had fled from the police in a stolen vehicle. Id. at 496. One of the investigators

observed that the phone was receiving calls from someone identified on its screen as

“Sincere my Wife.” Id. Without obtaining a warrant, the investigator used the phone

to call “Sincere” back. Id. Sincere informed the investigator that the phone belonged

to her husband. Id. Police obtained a photo of him; found that it matched security

footage captured during the defendant’s flight from the police; and from this

evidence, concluded that Sincere’s husband was the stolen vehicle’s driver.           Id.

Officers used the phone three more times without obtaining a warrant—first to call

Sincere to see if the defendant had returned home (he had not); next to answer

                                           22
Sincere’s call, at which point they informed her that the police were looking for him;

and then to remove the phone’s back casing and battery to locate its serial number

and other identifying information. Id.

      The defendant argued that the four warrantless searches of his phone violated

the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 498. The district court concluded that no warrant was

required because he had abandoned his phone. Id. The Fourth Circuit affirmed,

noting that an abandonment finding is based not on whether all formal property

rights have been relinquished but on whether the complaining party retains a

reasonable expectation of privacy in the articles alleged to have been abandoned based

on the defendant’s actions and intentions. Id. at 502, 505. Specifically, it noted that

the defendant had tossed aside other personal items—a shirt and a hat, located fifty

yards from the phone—while fleeing to evade capture and abandoning his vehicle. Id.

at 503. The court concluded that based on these circumstances, the district court’s

inference of abandonment seemed sensible because a cell phone’s GPS tracking can

“lead you to a defendant,” making it credible that a fleeing suspect might intentionally

discard his phone. Id. The court also noted that while phones occasionally slip out of

pockets, shirts do not accidentally fall off their wearers at the same moment as hats

and that cars do not ditch themselves after a crash. Id. “The fleeing suspect’s

relinquishment of the car, the hat, and the shirt near where the cell phone was found

support[ed] the district court’s finding of abandonment.” Id.

                                          23
      Some of our sister courts have stated that when a defendant leaves his cell

phone at a place where he had no right to be, he loses any legitimate expectation of

privacy in that phone. See Martinez v. State, No. 08-14-00130-CR, 2016 WL 4447660,

at *4 (Tex. App.—El Paso Aug. 24, 2016, pet. ref’d) (mem. op., not designated for

publication) (stating that the appellant had no expectation of privacy in a cell phone

that he left at a murder scene);24 Edwards v. State, 497 S.W.3d 147, 161 (Tex. App.—

Houston [1st Dist.] 2016, pet. ref’d) (holding that the appellant had abandoned his cell

phone at the scene of the robbery when he left the phone on top of the vehicle in

which he had ridden to the scene and then had fled on foot); Royston v. State, No. 14-

13-00920-CR, 2015 WL 3799698, at *4 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] June 18,

2015, pet. ref’d) (mem. op., not designated for publication) (holding that the appellant

had abandoned his phone by “surreptitiously” placing it in a public dressing room on

record mode and then walking away from not only the phone but also the store).

      Making no attempt to recover a phone dropped at a crime scene may signal

abandonment. See State v. Brown, 815 S.E.2d 761, 764-65 (S.C. 2018). 25 In Brown, a

burglar broke into the victims’ home while they were away and dropped his cell phone

      24
         In Martinez, when the police found the bloody cell phone in the victims’
master bedroom, the police did not know to whom it belonged. 2016 WL 4447660, at
*3. They initiated a call from the phone to a detective’s phone, and caller ID gave
them information leading to the appellant’s identity. Id. Upon learning the appellant’s
identity, they took no further steps to peruse the phone’s contents. Id. at *4.
       Although Brown’s specific issue focuses on digital information, the
      25

abandonment discussion is nonetheless helpful.

                                          24
by the window that he had broken to gain entry. Id. at 762. The police took the

phone and secured it in the evidence room. Id. Six days later, an officer retrieved the

phone; guessed the code to unlock the screen; looked through the “contacts”; found a

person listed as “Grandma”; and entered her number into a database that identified a

list of her relatives, including a man matching the age of the person on the phone’s

background screen (the defendant). Id. at 762–63. After identifying the defendant,

the police took the phone to his home and told him that it had been found at a

burglary scene. Id. at 763. The defendant admitted that it was his phone but claimed

that he had lost it a day after the burglary. Id. He was charged with burglary, and the

trial court found that he had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the phone’s

digital information because he had abandoned the phone. Id.

      The court noted that—at least until the time of the burglary—the defendant

had enjoyed Fourth Amendment protection for his phone’s digital information

because he had put a lock on the phone’s screen. Id. at 764. The court also presumed

that he did not intentionally leave his cell phone at the crime scene because “he must

have known that doing so would lead to the discovery that he was the burglar.” Id.

But then the phone sat in the evidence locker at the police station for six days, and the

record did not reflect that the defendant did anything during that time to try to

recover his phone: there was no evidence that he tried to call or text the phone to see

if someone would answer or that he attempted to contact his phone’s service provider

                                           25
for information on the phone’s whereabouts. Id. at 764–65. Instead, he contacted his

service provider and cancelled his phone’s cellular service. Id. at 765.

      The court observed that the defendant had “put himself in the difficult position

of having to balance the risk that finding the phone would incriminate him against the

benefit of retrieving the private digital information stored in it.” Id. The court stated,

“Looking at these facts objectively, any police officer would assume after six days of

no efforts by the owner to recover this phone—especially under the circumstance that

the owner left the phone at the scene of a burglary—that the owner had decided it

was too risky to try to recover it.” Id. The court reiterated,

      The idea that a burglar may leave his cell phone at the scene of his crime,
      do nothing to recover the phone for six days, cancel cellular service to
      the phone, and then expect that law enforcement officers will not
      attempt to access the contents of the phone to determine who
      committed the burglary is not an idea that society will accept as
      reasonable.

Id. at 765–66. The defendant’s decision not to attempt to recover the phone equated

to the phone’s abandonment. Id. at 765.

      Flight also signals abandonment of an expectation of privacy. Wiltz, 595

S.W.3d at 935. In Wiltz, the appellant was handcuffed after a traffic stop. Id. Before

he fled, he retained the privacy protections in his cell phone afforded by law. Id. But

when he opted to flee the scene and leave his cell phone behind, he “intentionally

gave up any privacy rights to information on the cell phone.” Id. (noting that Riley did

                                           26
not address the abandonment doctrine or any standing issue and “explicitly left the

door open for other case-specific exceptions”). 26

      In another flight case, United States v. Kamara, the court held that the defendant

had abandoned his phone when he abandoned the jacket that contained the phone.

No. 1:23-CR-149 (RDA), 2023 WL 8357946, at *5 (E.D. Va. Dec. 1, 2023) (mem. op.

& order). The defendant had worn a black puffer jacket during a shooting, and then

after the police pursued his vehicle, an officer saw him drop a firearm and “remove

and toss down his black jacket.” Id. at *1. The defendant’s iPhone was in the jacket,

although the defendant claimed that he did not know that the phone was in his jacket

pocket when he discarded the jacket. Id. The iPhone was not discovered until almost

a month later because the police were engaged in processing other evidence. Id. at *2.

When the police became aware of the phone, they obtained a search warrant for it. Id.

      Body-camera footage showed that the defendant had been fleeing law

enforcement on foot when he “actively discarded the puffer jacket he was wearing,

which was later found to contain fentanyl pills, over $500 in cash,” and the phone. Id.

at *5. The court noted that “[t]he implication here is significant and the same one

      26
         The Court of Criminal Appeals refused the defendant’s petition for
discretionary review in Wiltz. In a dissenting opinion to the refusal, Judge Walker
pointed out that the court had not yet “determine[d] the parameters in which a
person’s actions constitute intentional abandonment of his cell phone for purposes of
the Fourth Amendment” and opined that the court should have granted review.
Wiltz, 609 S.W.3d at 543 (Walker, J., dissenting). He also noted “the distinction
between the privacy interests of a cell phone as a physical object and the digital
contents stored on a cell phone.” Id. at 547.

                                           27
drawn in Small: Defendant was attempting to get away from law enforcement and did

not want to be linked to the pills [or] the information contained in the iPhone.” Id.

The court countered the defendant’s argument that he did not know where his phone

was on his person while he was being pursued by stating that such a theory “defies the

logic of modern life.” Id. The Kamara court noted that “cell phones ‘are now such a

pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might

conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy.’” Id. (quoting Riley, 573

U.S. at 385, 134 S. Ct. at 2484).

E. Analysis

       Based on the above, the police did not have to obtain a warrant to obtain the

phone’s IMEI number from its interior SIM tray before securing a warrant to view

the phone’s digital contents. The IMEI number allowed the police to describe the

phone with the particularity required to obtain the warrant, and to hold otherwise

would impede the ability of police officers (and good Samaritans) to attempt to

determine a cell phone’s ownership by checking its nondigital identifiers. See Riley,

573 U.S. at 387, 390, 134 S. Ct. at 2485, 2487 (allowing for police to examine a

phone’s physical aspects and to remove its battery); Ward, 2020 WL 6784195, at *8

(stating that police may legally open a phone’s battery pack to view its serial number

without violating the Fourth Amendment); Vega-Cervantes, 2015 WL 4877657, at *15

(stating that removal of a phone’s battery did not violate the defendant’s Fourth

Amendment rights); Pacheco, 2015 WL 3402832, at *6 (same); Andrade, 2022 WL

                                         28
179341 at *3 (same); Green, 164 So.3d at 344 (same); see also Moore, 839 S.E.2d at 888

(allowing for diminished privacy expectation so that cell phone’s finder could examine

it to determine ownership); Hill, 789 S.E.2d at 317–18 (same).

         Further, by fleeing, Martinez abandoned any reasonable expectation of privacy

in the IMEI number when he dropped the phone at the crime scene—a place he had

no right to be—along with his baseball cap, his fake badge, his fake deportation

warrant, and his balaclava. 27 See Granville, 423 S.W.3d at 409 (noting that a person may

abandon his reasonable expectation of privacy in his phone’s contents by abandoning

the phone); Quashie, 162 F. Supp. 3d at 141 (holding that suspect abandoned his

phone when he dropped it and then left it behind); Robinson, 2019 WL 1211431, at *5,

*9–10, *14 (same); Martinez, 2016 WL 4447660, at *4 (same); see also Wiltz, 595 S.W.3d

at 934–36 (addressing cell-phone abandonment); Small, 944 F.3d at 503 (concluding

that phone had been abandoned when defendant also abandoned other personal or

incriminating items while fleeing); Kamara, 2023 WL 8357946, at *5 (same).

Accordingly, we overrule Martinez’s second point and the related portion of his third

point.

         The record does not reflect whether Martinez attempted to contact the police
         27

to see if they had his phone or whether he attempted to cancel his cellular service. See
Brown, 815 S.E.2d at 764–65. The record also does not reflect how long the police
waited before applying for the search warrant. Cf. id. at 765.

                                           29
                                  IV. Photo Lineup

      Martinez’s first point challenges the photo lineup. Assuming, without deciding,

that the photo lineup was unduly suggestive and that the trial court erred by failing to

suppress it, we conclude that any error was ultimately harmless. See Tex. R. App. P.

44.2(a) (explaining that for constitutional error, the court must reverse a judgment of

conviction or punishment unless it determines beyond a reasonable doubt that the

error did not contribute to the conviction or punishment); Tillman v. State, 376 S.W.3d

188, 202 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2012, pet. ref’d) (explaining that the

constitutional-harm analysis should focus not on the propriety of the trial’s outcome

but rather on the probable impact on the jury in light of the existence of other

evidence, with the record viewed in a neutral, impartial, and even-handed manner);

Hurd v. State, Nos. 2-09-104-CR, 2-09-105-CR, 2-09-106-CR, 2-09-107-CR, 2010 WL

2636118, at *5 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth July 1, 2010, no pet.) (mem. op., not

designated for publication) (“[W]e must determine whether there is a reasonable

probability that the illegally obtained and wrongly admitted evidence []moved the jury

from a state of non-persuasion to one of persuasion on a particular issue[].”).

      Overwhelming evidence tied Martinez to the offense, including his Tarrant

County jail inmate ID photo that was found in his vehicle with a fake badge identical

to the one used in the October 18, 2020 robbery and abandoned at the scene and

testimony by Jesus, Rene, and Roberto about the offense itself, including about their

television, which was broken during the robbery. Martinez’s cell phone—abandoned

                                           30
at the crime scene along with the fake badge and fake deportation order—contained

all of the remaining evidence that the jury needed to find him guilty beyond a

reasonable doubt: an image of a fake search warrant created six days before the

robbery; searches on how to “make your own custom fake legal forms” from three

days before the robbery; an image of a fake deportation order like the one found on

the scene; a poorly aligned photo of a broken television taken on October 18, 2020;

and Martinez’s selfie, from which the jurors could compare both his trial appearance

and his jail ID photo for themselves. See Tillman, 376 S.W.3d at 202 (“The presence

of overwhelming evidence supporting the finding in question can be a factor in the

evaluation of harmless error under Rule 44.2(a).”); Hurd, 2010 WL 2636118, at *6

(holding that witness’s identification of the appellant did not likely materially affect

the jury’s deliberation in light of all of the other evidence linking the appellant to the

offense and thus was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt). In light of the above,

independently secured evidence of Martinez’s identity as the robber and his guilt,

Rene’s in-court identification of him and evidence of Rene’s identification of Martinez

from the photo lineup—both at 80%—were harmless. We overrule Martinez’s first

point and the related portion of his third point.

                                           31
                                  V. Conclusion

      Having overruled Martinez’s three points, we affirm the trial court’s judgments.

                                                    /s/ Dabney Bassel

                                                    Dabney Bassel
                                                    Justice

Publish

Delivered: April 11, 2024

                                         32