UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. GLORIA PATRICIA TAYLOR
No. 20-7593
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit
December 5, 2022
PUBLISHED
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, at Greenbelt. Theodore D. Chuang, District Judge. (8:15-cr-00265-TDC-1; 8:19-cv-00065-TDC)
Argued: October 25, 2022 Decided: December 5, 2022
Before GREGORY, Chief Judge, and WYNN and THACKER, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Thacker wrote the opinion, in which Chief Judge Gregory and Judge Wynn joined.
ARGUED: Stephen Bennett Mercer, RAQUINMERCER LLC, Rockville, Maryland, for Appellant. Christopher Michael Sarma, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Greenbelt, Maryland, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Erek L. Barron, United States Attorney, Baltimore, Maryland, Kelly O. Hayes, Assistant United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Greenbelt, Maryland, for Appellee.
THACKER, Circuit Judge:
Appellant Gloria Patricia Taylor (“Appellant“) appeals the district court‘s order denying relief on her
I.
A.
In June 2013, United States Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA“) agents in Tucson, Arizona, notified their Maryland counterparts that a suspicious shipment leaving Tucson was scheduled to arrive at a shipping depot in Brentwood, Maryland.
DEA agents in Tucson identified Appellant as a potential suspect because surveillance footage captured a vehicle rented in Appellant‘s name parked outside the Tucson shipping depot when the three crates of marijuana shipped. Investigators then subpoenaed Southwest Airlines for Appellant‘s travel records and discovered that Appellant had booked numerous flights to and from Phoenix, Arizona. Appellant‘s flight times were consistent with the timing of several shipments from Tucson to various locations in Maryland, including to Royal Gem and Artistique.
As part of its investigation into Appellant, the DEA served several administrative subpoenas pursuant to
- October 9, 2013 to January 6, 2014 (issued on January 7, 2014);
- January 7, 2014 to February 18, 2014 (issued on February 19, 2014); and
- February 19, 2014 to May 14, 2014 (issued on May 15, 2014).
Each subpoena requested “All customers/subscribers for the date range given, provide name and street and/or mailing address, Local and long distance telephone connection records, including incoming and outgoing calls for: 757-945-6589.” J.A. 954-56.3
In response to the subpoenas, Sprint turned over Appellant‘s subscriber and account information along with “call detail reports” for the requested periods. J.A. 934. The call detail reports for the target phone number included the calling number, the called number, the digits dialed, the type of call, the start and end time and date for each call, and the duration of each call. Additionally, for each of the three subpoenas, Sprint included the “repoll” data for every call in the call records. A repoll number “reflects which phone switch handled the call,” and each number is associated with a specific metropolitan area or areas. Id. For example, repoll number “27” is associated with Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and repoll number “40” is associated with Little Rock, Arkansas. The call detail reports for Appellant‘s phone number showed several of the calls made and received between October 2013 and
On March 12, 2014, a federal magistrate judge in Maryland issued an administrative order pursuant to
location information (“CSLI“) for the (757) 945-6589 phone number, which DEA agents had linked to Appellant. On May 2, 2014, the Government, using the historical CSLI, obtained a prospective Global Positioning System (“GPS“) tracking warrant pursuant to
On September 30, 2014, DEA agents used GPS data to track Appellant to a U-Haul facility in Landover, Maryland, where agents observed Appellant rent a U-Haul van. At approximately 3:46pm, law enforcement officers saw the same U-Haul parked in Appellant‘s driveway and watched Appellant and her son unload items from it. At approximately 4:43pm, officers observed Appellant and her son removing a large wooden crate from the back of the U-Haul. At that point, the officers detained Appellant and her son, pending a search and seizure warrant application. The officers then conducted a dog sniff, which revealed that the crate contained a suspicious substance.6 At 4:58pm,
Appellant and her son were informed of their rights pursuant to Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966). Appellant denied knowing the contents of the crate and refused to let the officers search her residence or the U-Haul.
That same day -- September 30, 2014 -- the Government obtained a search warrant (“Search Warrant“) for Appellant‘s residence, the U-Haul, the crate, and Appellant‘s two cars. The Government supported its search warrant application with a seven-page probable cause affidavit detailing much of what is described above, including Appellant‘s flight records, U-Haul rentals, and GPS tracking data. Officers recovered 286 pounds of marijuana from the crate inside the U-Haul. Officers also recovered nine cell phones, two drug ledgers, and $30,000 cash from Appellant‘s house. On October 1, 2014, Appellant provided a written statement in which she admitted responsibility for the items seized from her house and the van.
B.
On March 14, 2016, a federal grand jury charged Appellant with one count of conspiracy
motion to expand the scope of the certificate of appealability to include this claim. Therefore, the claim is not addressed in this appeal.
At trial, R&L Carriers driver James Willis (“Willis“) testified that he regularly delivered packages to Appellant. Willis claimed that he first met Appellant when he had tried to deliver a crate, but the individuals at the mailing address refused to accept the package. Thereafter, Appellant contacted Willis and asked that he meet her across the street from the mailing address with the crate. Appellant showed up with a U-Haul rental vehicle, and Willis gave her the crate. According to Willis‘s testimony, Appellant requested that Willis become her “regular delivery driver” for all future deliveries. J.A. 479. When law enforcement officers intercepted the three crates of marijuana on July 1, 2013, R&L Carriers personnel told Willis that officers had found drugs in the crates. Willis testified that he confronted Appellant who told him that “she was sorry,” and offered to pay Willis $10,000 if he could “snatch” the seized crates and return them to her, but Willis refused. Id. at 511-12.
On April 28, 2016, a jury convicted Appellant of all four counts, and Appellant was sentenced to 144 months in prison. Following her conviction, Appellant retained new counsel and filed an appeal. On May 23, 2017, we affirmed Appellant‘s convictions and sentence. United States v. Taylor, 692 F. App‘x 114, 118 (4th Cir. 2017) (per curiam).
C.
On January 7, 2019, Appellant filed a motion to vacate, set aside, or correct her sentence pursuant to
violation of the Fourth Amendment. Specifically, Appellant argued that DEA agents had (1) collected CSLI pursuant to
On March 19, 2020, the district court ordered the Government to supplement the record by “filing all of the applications for historical cell site location information, including all attachments, that resulted in the issuance” of “four separate orders authorizing the production of historical cell site location information.” J.A. 885. The Government complied with the order and produced its applications for the
On April 17, 2020, the district court denied Appellant‘s
“obtaining historical CSLI constitutes a search, such that the Fourth Amendment bars the Government from obtaining it ‘without first securing a judicial warrant based on probable cause.‘” United States v. Taylor, No. 19-0065, 2020 WL 1904710, at *4 (D. Md. Apr. 17, 2020) (quoting Graham I, 796 F.3d at 360-61). This court, sitting en banc, reversed Graham I‘s holding a month after Appellant‘s trial. United States v. Graham (Graham II), 824 F.3d 421 (4th Cir. 2016). However, the Supreme Court held in Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206 (2018), that law enforcement must secure a warrant to obtain historical CSLI. Id. at 2213; see also United States v. Chavez, 894 F.3d 593, 608 (4th Cir. 2018) (acknowledging that Carpenter abrogated Graham II).
Nevertheless, the district court reasoned, “where both the
D.
On May 13, 2020, Appellant filed a motion to alter or amend the judgment pursuant to
order denying her
On August 17, 2020, the district court ordered the Government to produce the subpoenas that it had used to identify (757) 945-6589 as a phone number assigned to Appellant. The district court also ordered the Government to provide all documents that were produced in response to those subpoenas as well as any other documents that the Government used to link Appellant to the target phone number. The Government complied by providing the three administrative subpoenas described above.
On September 14, 2020, the district court denied Appellant‘s motion to alter or amend the judgment. The district court
be historical CSLI.” Id. Accordingly, because the district court determined that repoll data was not historical CSLI, it reasoned that the officers did not need a search warrant to acquire a subscriber‘s repoll numbers.
Alternatively, the district court concluded that Appellant‘s trial counsel could not have successfully moved to suppress this information in any event because “the good faith exception would clearly apply.” Taylor, 2020 WL 5513502, at *2. The district court determined, “even if the repoll information could... be deemed to be subject to a higher standard,” the Government acted in good faith given that it “did not request location information as part of its general request for subscriber information and telephone connection records,” and the Government‘s “use of a subpoena to obtain the information was lawful at the time.” Id.
Moreover, the district court determined that even if the Government did not reference the repoll data in its
E.
On December 21, 2020, Appellant filed a brief in this court pursuant to Local Rule 22(a) requesting a certificate of appealability in accordance with
Appellant argued that obtaining repoll data pursuant to an administrative subpoena represented an intrusion on “protected location information” and that the district court had been wrong to deny her Rule 59(e) motion. Appellant‘s Informal Opening Br. at 9. On January 19, 2022, we granted Appellant‘s motion for a certificate of appealability, limited to the following issue: “Whether trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to file [a] suppression motion based on [the] Government‘s allegedly unlawful acquisition of repoll number data.” ECF No. 15.
II.
We review a district court‘s denial of a Rule 59(e) motion to alter or amend a judgment for abuse of discretion standard. Wicomico Nursing Home v. Padilla, 910 F.3d 739, 750 (4th Cir. 2018). We review any legal conclusions as to whether certain law enforcement conduct infringes Fourth Amendment rights de novo. United States v. Breza, 308 F.3d 430, 433 (4th Cir. 2002).
III.
A.
The Sixth Amendment right to counsel guarantees not only the presence
likely would have been granted, and (2) a reasonable probability that granting the motion would have affected the outcome of [her] trial.” United States v. Pressley, 990 F.3d 383, 388 (4th Cir. 2021) (first alteration in original) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Here, Appellant argues that her trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to file a suppression motion based on the Government‘s allegedly unlawful acquisition of her repoll number data. Appellant contends that the Government‘s warrantless procurement of her repoll data from her cell phone service provider was an unreasonable search in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
The Fourth Amendment protects individuals against “unreasonable searches and seizures.”
The exclusionary rule is a judicially created remedy that “prevents the government from using evidence obtained as a result of an illegal search against the victim of that search.” United States v. Bullette, 854 F.3d 261, 265 (4th Cir. 2017) (citing Utah v. Strieff,
579 U.S. 232, 237 (2016)); see also United States v. Riley, 920 F.3d 200, 205 (4th Cir. 2019). This includes “both the primary evidence obtained as a direct result of an illegal search and... evidence later discovered and found to be derivative of an illegality, the so-called fruit of the poisonous tree.” Strieff, 579 U.S. at 237 (internal quotation marks omitted).
However, an exception to the exclusionary rule exists where government agents acted with an objectively reasonable “good faith” belief that their conduct was lawful. Davis v. United States, 564 U.S. 229, 238 (2011); see also United States v. Brunson, 968 F.3d 325, 334 (4th Cir. 2020). This “good faith exception” has been applied to evidence obtained “in objectively reasonable reliance upon a statute authorizing warrantless administrative searches, but where the statute is ultimately found to violate the Fourth Amendment.” Illinois v. Krull, 480 U.S. 340, 342 (1987). And “[u]nless a statute is clearly unconstitutional, an officer cannot be expected to question the judgment of the legislature that passed the
B.
The Government obtained Appellant‘s repoll number data through use of administrative subpoenas issued pursuant to the SCA. The SCA provides “an avenue for law enforcement entities to compel a provider of electronic communication services to disclose” certain telecommunications records. In re Application of U.S. for an Ord. Pursuant to 18 U.S.C. Section 2703(d) (Application for Section 2703(d) Ord.), 707 F.3d 283, 287 (4th Cir. 2013). In seeking access to basic subscriber information, the government need not give prior notice to the subscriber or customer.
governmental entities may use an administrative subpoena to obtain basic subscriber information, including a subscriber‘s name, address, telephone number or other subscriber number or identity, a subscriber‘s length of service and the types of services the subscriber or customer utilized.
To procure other information pertaining to a subscriber or customer without consent, the government must secure either a probable cause warrant or a court order.
We have not yet addressed whether an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in her repoll number data, and we need not do so today. Even assuming that repoll data is subject to the greater protection of a court-approved warrant, the Government lawfully obtained the information at issue here in good faith reliance on pre-Graham I court orders and subpoenas issued in accordance with the SCA. When the Government served administrative subpoenas on Sprint in 2014, it acted in good faith pursuant to the SCA, which permits the collection of certain subscriber information through a subpoena. At that point, we had not yet decided Graham I, and the Supreme Court “consistently ha[d] held
that a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.” Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 743-44 (1979) (holding that use of pen register was not a “search” for Fourth Amendment purposes); United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435, 442-43 (1976) (holding that the government could obtain bank records through a subpoena); see also United States v. Felder, 993 F.3d 57, 75-76 (2d Cir. 2021) (“Prior to Carpenter, all five courts of appeals to have considered the question relied on [the third-party] doctrine in holding that government acquisition of historical cell-site location information from third parties was not subject to the Fourth Amendment‘s warrant requirement.“) (citing United States v. Graham (Graham II), 824 F.3d 421, 424-25 (4th Cir. 2016)). Thus, until the Supreme Court declined “to extend Smith and Miller to the collection of CSLI,” Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206, 2220 (2018), law enforcement officers had reason to believe that they could collect information from a cell phone provider as long as they complied with the SCA. See United States v. Chavez, 894 F.3d 593, 608 (4th Cir. 2018) (holding that historical CSLI collected
Indeed, in Graham I, we affirmed the district court‘s admission of CSLI data because the government relied in good faith on a facially valid
Here, the subpoenas sought “All customers/subscribers for the date range given, provide name and street and/or mailing address, Local and long distance telephone connection records, including incoming and outgoing calls for: 757-945-6589,” J.A. 954-56, all of which is permitted subscriber information under the SCA,
a subpoena. Therefore, any motion to suppress filed before Appellant‘s trial would not have been meritorious, even in light of Graham I, because the officers had reason to believe in 2014 that it was lawful to collect this information through an administrative subpoena.
But Appellant asks this court to look past the language of the subpoenas and find that the agents here were “on notice after Sprint‘s responsive production to the first subpoena... that Sprint includes repoll location data in response to an administrative subpoena.” Appellant‘s Opening Br. at 9. While this may be true, even if Sprint did routinely turn over such information, Appellant has not identified any legal obligation the Government had to ask Sprint to stop doing so. Rather, the Government‘s subpoenas ask for statutorily authorized materials. The Government cannot be held responsible when a subpoena recipient exceeds the bounds of a subpoena and produces more information than was requested or required. Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 487-90 (1971) (holding that police who obtained evidence voluntarily from a suspect‘s wife did not need a search warrant because the officers exerted no effort to coerce or dominate her and were not obligated to refuse her offer to take the evidence). Accordingly, we hold that the district court did not err by concluding that a motion to suppress would not have been meritorious because the good faith exception applies.
IV.
For the foregoing reasons, the district court‘s order denying Appellant‘s motion to alter or amend the judgment is
AFFIRMED.