Court Opinion

ID: 9964606
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-04-30 15:01:38.318733+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:25:36.228785
License: Public Domain

United States Court of Appeals
         FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued April 5, 2024                  Decided April 30, 2024

                        No. 22-3069

                UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
                        APPELLEE

                             v.

   JAMES HUTCHINGS, JR., ALSO KNOWN AS JAMES HUNTER
                     HUTCHINGS, II,
                      APPELLANT

        Appeal from the United States District Court
                for the District of Columbia
                   (No. 1:19-cr-00361-2)

    Paul F. Enzinna, appointed by the court, argued the cause
and filed the briefs for appellant.

    Daniel J. Lenerz, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the
cause for appellee. With him on the brief was Chrisellen R.
Kolb, Assistant U.S. Attorney.

    Before: PILLARD, WALKER and PAN, Circuit Judges.

    Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge PILLARD.
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     PILLARD, Circuit Judge:       A jury convicted appellant
James Hutchings, Jr., of conspiracy to unlawfully traffic and
transport firearms. That conviction relied on evidence
retrieved from Hutchings’s cell phone, which he
unsuccessfully moved to suppress before trial. Hutchings now
appeals the denial of the suppression motion.

     FBI agents found and seized Hutchings’s iPhone while
arresting suspected firearms and narcotics trafficker Linwood
Thorne. At the time, Thorne was alone in an apartment with
the iPhone nearby on a pile of his own clothes. After the arrest,
an FBI agent applied for—and received—a separate warrant to
search the phone, attesting that it was “associated with” Thorne
and that it “may reveal evidence pertaining to Thorne’s alleged
violations of federal narcotics laws.” Joint Appendix (J.A.)
188, 200. It wasn’t until agents began reviewing a report of the
phone’s contents that they had reason to think the iPhone was
Hutchings’s.

     Hutchings advances only one argument in support of
suppression. He asserts that, when law enforcement officers
reviewed the first page of the forensic report detailing his
phone’s contents and saw a notation that the phone’s “owner
name” was “James’s iPhone,” they were required to halt their
search. That label, Hutchings contends, put the searching
officers on notice that the phone did not belong to Thorne and
had therefore been erroneously included in the warrant.
Because the probable cause determination in the warrant did
not depend on the phone’s ownership but on its association
with Thorne and its probable evidentiary value regarding
Thorne’s suspected offenses, we affirm.

                      BACKGROUND

    In December 2018, federal law enforcement agents
searched two addresses associated with suspected drug and
                               3
firearms trafficker Linwood Thorne. They found over 40
kilograms of heroin laced with fentanyl, 55 pounds of
marijuana, six firearms, and drug-distribution paraphernalia. A
grand jury soon indicted Thorne on narcotics trafficking and
firearm charges, and a warrant issued for his arrest. Thorne did
not self-surrender to law enforcement.

     On January 3, 2019, FBI agents traced Thorne to an
apartment building on Linden Avenue in Baltimore. As agents
surveilled the Linden Avenue location, they observed two men,
one of whom they thought resembled Thorne, driving away
from the apartment building in a silver Dodge Charger. The
agents conducted an investigative stop of the Charger and
identified the two people in it as appellant Hutchings and Mark
Harrison, Jr. Harrison told law enforcement that Thorne was
“the only occupant inside the upstairs apartment, apartment
#2,” of the Linden Avenue apartment building. J.A. 67.
Harrison and Hutchings left, and the agents proceeded to
apartment #2, where they encountered Thorne alone and
arrested him. In a search incident to Thorne’s arrest, agents
seized four cell phones: one on Thorne’s person, two on and
next to a pile of Thorne’s clothes, and one in a nearby galley
kitchen.

     After Thorne’s arrest, FBI Special Agent Richard Migliara
applied for a further warrant to search the contents of the four
phones “associated with” Thorne. In support of his “belie[f]
[that] a search of the Target Telephones may reveal evidence
pertaining to Thorne’s alleged violations of federal narcotics
laws,” J.A. 200, Migliara averred the following: Thorne had
been indicted for large-scale drug- and firearm-trafficking
crimes, and, after a warrant was issued for Thorne’s arrest,
Thorne did not surrender to law enforcement and law
enforcement was “unable to locate or apprehend” him. J.A.
197-99. When law enforcement eventually located Thorne,
                                4
officers “recovered the Target Telephones from the address
along with Thorne’s wallet containing his driver’s license.”
J.A. 200. Based on his law enforcement experience, Migliara
stated that “narcotics traffickers use cellular telephones to
further their illegal activities,” and, accordingly, “narcotics
traffickers . . . frequently have access to several cellular
telephones” and “frequently change cellular telephones[] to
avoid detection and attempt to thwart apprehension by law
enforcement.” J.A. 187. The magistrate judge signed the
warrant authorizing the search of the four cell phones for
evidence that could, among other things, “establish[] or
document[] the commission of the target offenses,” “identify[]
locations where the individual committed the target offenses,”
and “document[] meetings and communications between
individuals committing one or more of the target offenses.”
J.A. 181-83.

     A digital forensics team spent several months
“cracking”—that is, unlocking—the iPhone discovered on top
of Thorne’s clothing, eventually producing a 36,317-page
digital forensic report describing its contents. The first page of
that report indicates that the “owner name” of the phone is
“James’s iPhone.” J.A. 649-50. Agents Migliara and
Christopher Ray reviewed the report. They determined, based
on communications and photographs found in the report, that
the phone belonged to Hutchings. The recovered information
showed that Hutchings had been serving as the middleman
between Georgia firearms dealer Kofi Appiah and Thorne.

    Based in part on the contents of the forensic report, a grand
jury indicted Hutchings on one count of conspiracy to
unlawfully traffic and transport firearms. Before trial,
Hutchings moved to suppress all evidence derived from the
search of his cell phone. He argued, as relevant here, that the
search was unsupported by the warrant because the probable
                               5
cause finding “depended upon [the phone’s] association with
Thorne.” J.A. 409. Hutchings asserted that, as soon as the
agents learned that the phone belonged to Hutchings, not
Thorne, they were required to discontinue their search. After a
hearing, the district court denied Hutchings’s motion. “The
warrant affidavit said only that the phones were ‘associated’
with Thorne,” the district court reasoned, and, “given all of the
underlying facts here,” that remained true even if the phone
belonged to Hutchings:         It was “found in [Thorne’s]
apartment[,] when he was alone [and] with other phones—
which were also consistent with the criminal activity with
which he was charged.” J.A. 612.

     After a three-day trial, the jury found Hutchings guilty of
conspiracy to traffic and transport firearms, and the district
court sentenced him to 60 months in prison followed by three
years of supervised release. He now timely appeals the denial
of his motion to suppress, arguing that the officers reviewing
the report were required to discontinue their search after seeing
the notation on its first page that the phone was “James’s
iPhone.”

     We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We review
de novo the district court’s conclusions of law, and review
findings of fact for clear error. United States v. Miller, 799
F.3d 1097, 1101 (D.C. Cir. 2015). We will affirm the judgment
of the district court if “any reasonable view of the record
supports its denial of the motion to suppress.” Id. (internal
quotation marks omitted).

                        DISCUSSION

     On appeal, Hutchings does not challenge the facial validity
of the warrant authorizing search of the contents of his iPhone
or argue that it was unsupported by probable cause. He asserts
only that the FBI agents executing the warrant violated
                              6
Hutchings’s Fourth Amendment rights by continuing to review
the forensic report after they saw, on its first page, that the
owner name was “James’s iPhone.” The “James’s iPhone”
label, he argues, put the officers on notice that “the iPhone
likely was not Thorne’s,” since Thorne’s first name is not
“James.” Hutchings Br. 12. Hutchings emphasizes that the
same officers knew that police had stopped someone named
“James” outside the apartment before they executed the arrest
warrant, so had reason to know the phone might be his, not
Thorne’s. Once the officers realized that the phone was not
Thorne’s, Hutchings contends, the officers were on notice that
“the factual basis on which the warrant was authorized” was
“inaccurate.” Hutchings Br. 11-12.

     For support, Hutchings cites Maryland v. Garrison, 480
U.S. 79 (1987). The warrant in that case authorized the search
of an individual named Lawrence McWebb and the “2036 Park
Avenue third floor apartment” occupied by McWebb based on
probable cause to believe McWebb kept at the apartment
marijuana and related items used for the drug’s illegal sale.
Garrison, 480 U.S. at 80 & n.1. While the officers searched
the third floor of 2036 Park Avenue—but only after they found
heroin, cash, and drug paraphernalia therein—they realized
that the third floor contained two apartments and that they
found the contraband in an apartment occupied by Harold
Garrison, not Lawrence McWebb. Id. at 80. The Court held
that the execution of the warrant did not violate Garrison’s
“constitutional right to be secure in his home” because, when
they entered and began searching Garrison’s apartment, the
officers reasonably “perceived McWebb’s apartment and the
third-floor premises as one and the same” and, by the time the
officers realized that the apartment was Garrison’s, they had
already discovered contraband. Id. at 87-88.
                               7
     Because the warrant’s authorized search area was
premised on the swearing officer’s mistaken representation that
“there was only one apartment on the third floor and that it was
occupied by McWebb,” id. at 81, Garrison considered how to
account for the mistake: “If the officers had known, or should
have known, that the third floor contained two apartments
before they entered the living quarters on the third floor,” the
Court explained, “they would have been obligated to limit their
search to McWebb’s apartment.” Id. at 86. And, even after
they began executing the warrant, the officers “were required
to discontinue the search . . . as soon as they discovered that
there were two separate units on the third floor and therefore
were put on notice of the risk that they might be in a unit
erroneously included within the terms of the warrant.” Id. at
87.

     Hutchings and the government agree that, under Garrison,
officers executing a search warrant are required to discontinue
a search as soon as they know or should know that there is a
risk that they are searching an item or a premises that was
“erroneously included within the terms of the warrant.” Id.
Other courts have referenced Garrison for the same
proposition: “Officer authority to search property listed in a
search warrant is not unlimited,” the Ninth Circuit explained.
Blight v. City of Manteca, 944 F.3d 1061, 1067 (9th Cir. 2019).
“If officers know or should know there is a risk that they are
searching a residence that was erroneously included in a search
warrant, then they must stop the search as soon as they are ‘put
on notice’ of that risk.” Id. (quoting Garrison, 480 U.S. at 87).
The Seventh and Tenth Circuits have taken the same approach.
See, e.g., United States v. Ramirez, 112 F.3d 849, 851-52 (7th
Cir. 1997); Harman v. Pollock, 586 F.3d 1254, 1261 (10th Cir.
2009).
                               8
     The only question, then, is whether the label “James’s
iPhone” on the first page of the forensic report conflicted with
“the basis on which the Magistrate Judge had found probable
cause to search the iPhone’s contents,” and therefore put the
officers on notice of a risk that the warrant had mistakenly
authorized the search of Hutchings’s iPhone. Hutchings Br.
11-12. Because there is no conflict between the basis for the
warrant and the forensic report’s identification of “James’s
iPhone,” that information did not trigger a duty under Garrison
to halt the search. The validity of the warrant did not depend
on who owned the phones. The warrant affidavit never
mentioned the phones’ ownership. It averred, simply, that the
phones were “recovered” from “the address along with
Thorne’s wallet containing his driver’s license,” J.A. 200, were
“associated with” Thorne, J.A. 188, and that, given the use of
cell phones in narcotics trafficking, the phones “may reveal
evidence pertaining to Thorne’s alleged violation of federal
narcotics laws,” J.A. 200.

     All of that remained accurate even after the officers
discovered that the phone was labeled “James’s iPhone.”
Indeed, that one of the phones might be labeled with a name
different from Thorne’s is consistent with its being
“associated” with Thorne, a leader of a vast drug-and-weapons
enterprise who was evading arrest. Unlike in Garrison, where
the executing officers discovered during their search a material
mistake in the facts supporting the warrant—it was not true that
their suspect occupied the entire third floor—here, the officers’
discovery that the phone was labeled “James’s iPhone” did not
contradict the facts that supported the warrant application.

    That is true even though the officers reviewing the forensic
report knew that a man named James was stopped leaving
Thorne’s apartment shortly before the phone was seized from
Thorne. That an iPhone bears the first name of Thorne’s recent
                               9
visitor does not mean that the phone was not “associated with”
or used by Thorne. As the district court sensibly explained, the
agents executing the search warrant had no reason to “presume
that people who had visited the apartment were going to leave
their phones there,” since “[m]ost people take their phones with
them.” J.A. 606. And, even if it had occurred to the officers
that the phone may have belonged to Hutchings, it was
plausible that Hutchings was lending his phone to Thorne for
use as he evaded arrest. Accordingly, the label “James’s
iPhone” neither suggested that the iPhone was not “associated
with” Thorne, nor put a reasonable officer on notice that the
warrant may have erroneously included this iPhone.

                          *    *    *

    For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district
court is affirmed.

                                                    So ordered.