UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. RAMAR TRAVELLE PALMS, a/k/a Reddy, Defendant - Appellant.
No. 20-5072
United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit
December 21, 2021
PUBLISH
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma (D.C. No. 4:19-CR-00103-CVE-1)
Blain Myhre, Blain Myhre LLC, Englewood, Colorado, for the Defendant – Appellant.
Thomas E. Duncombe, Assistant United States Attorney (Clinton J. Johnson, Acting United States Attorney, with him on the brief), Northern District of Oklahoma, Tulsa, Oklahoma, for Plaintiff – Appellee.
Before McHUGH, EBEL, and EID, Circuit Judges.
The Government tried Appellant Ramar Palms before a jury in the Northern District of Oklahoma and obtained guilty verdicts on three crimes related to sex trafficking. On appeal, Mr. Palms asks this court to reverse his convictions and remand for a new trial for two reasons. First, Mr. Palms argues the district court should have suppressed the evidence obtained from his cell phone because the warrant and the search of his cell phone violated the Fourth Amendment. Second, he argues the district court abused its discretion when it excluded sexual behavior evidence under Federal Rule of Evidence 412 because the exclusion violated the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.
As detailed below, we hold the warrant to search Mr. Palms’s cell phone was sufficiently particular and the search was reasonable. We also hold the district court did not abuse its discretion in excluding sexual behavior evidence under Rule 412. Therefore, we affirm Mr. Palms’s convictions.
I. BACKGROUND
A. Factual History
In September 2018, Mr. Palms met M.W., a twenty-seven-year-old single mom, at a bar in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They began to spend time together and went on a few dates. Eventually, Mr. Palms invited M.W. to go on a road trip to Louisiana with him. On that road trip, Mr. Palms told M.W. he was a pimp and that he wanted her to make money for him. At the time, they were in the car together “in the middle of nowhere,” and M.W. could not get away from Mr. Palms. ROA Vol. III at 1022. That night, they stopped at a hotel in Houston, Texas. There, Mr. Palms assaulted M.W. Then, he advertised M.W.’s services online and forced M.W. to go on her first “date.” Mr. Palms taught M.W. about the pimping industry and told her she should keep her head down and not look any man in the eyes because another pimp might steal her from him.
When they returned to Tulsa, Mr. Palms began controlling every aspect of M.W.’s life. Mr. Palms required M.W. to quit her two jobs and work for him full-time as a prostitute. He constantly communicated with M.W. via text messages and phone calls and monitored her whereabouts. Mr. Palms also tracked who M.W. talked to and controlled her money, car, and phone. If M.W. did something or talked to a man he did not approve of, he would hit or strangle her.
Mr. Palms posted ads or required M.W. to post ads to various websites offering commercial sex acts from M.W. Mr. Palms created a template for her to follow to ensure she would attract clients. He required M.W. to post the ads regularly throughout the day and to go on at least four or five “dates” a day. Clients paid Mr. Palms by Cash App or paid M.W. in cash. In either case, Mr. Palms required M.W. to give him all the money she earned. Mr. Palms would occasionally buy M.W. food and other items, but M.W. had to ask him for money to support herself and her two children. M.W. could not cover her utility bills or rent, and eventually she was evicted.
2. Arrest
On November 20, 2018, Tulsa police officer Justin Oxford was investigating online advertisements for suspected prostitution. Officer Oxford responded to one of the ads and was directed to meet M.W. in room 220 at the Peoria Inn in Tulsa. When he arrived, he saw Mr. Palms parked in a car near room 220. After M.W. let Officer Oxford into the room, he asked for a sex act and put money on the nightstand. When M.W. agreed, Officer Oxford identified himself as a police officer and arrested her. M.W. told Officer Oxford that she was being forced to work as a prostitute and identified Mr. Palms as her pimp. Officer Oxford also saw a text message from Mr. Palms on M.W.’s phone screen. The police arrested Mr. Palms in the parking lot and seized his cell phone.
3. Warrant and Search of Mr. Palms’s Cell Phone
Officer Oxford sought a warrant to search Mr. Palms’s cell phone from a Tulsa County judge. In his affidavit supporting the warrant, Officer Oxford detailed the events of November 20, 2018, and the information he obtained from M.W. about
including, but not limited to, all digital evidence stored on removable storage and magnetic or electronic data contained in the contents of such tablet, cell phone, laptop, camera and/or memory cards, including electronic data storage devices, which in whole or part contain any and all evidence related to the subscriber information from the SIM (subscriber identification module) and/or ownership information for the device, electronic mail, call logs, contacts, calendars, location services information, global positioning (GPS) data and information, internet chat communications, browser cache, auto-complete forms, stored passwords, instant messaging, SMS (short message service), MMS (multimedia message service), social media account data and information, application data and information, documents, photographs, images, graphics, pictures, videos, movies, audio or video recordings, any associated metadata, and any recorded documents depicting communications, correspondence or storage of these communications, files, graphics, documents, or other data related to the crime of Human Trafficking.
Id.
Officer Brian Booth, a member of the Tulsa Police Department’s intelligence unit, extracted all the data from Mr. Palms’s cell phone pursuant to the warrant. Officer Booth gave the extracted information, excluding the cloud data,2 to Officer Oxford, who searched it.
B. Procedural History
In July 2019, a federal grand jury charged Mr. Palms with sex trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion in violation of
1. Motion to Suppress
Prior to trial, Mr. Palms submitted a motion arguing the evidence obtained from his cell phone should be suppressed because the warrant and the search of his cell phone violated the Fourth Amendment. He made four arguments in support: (1) the document titled “Search Warrant” was not actually a warrant because it did not have a sufficient statement of probable cause, command language, or appropriate headings;3 (2) the warrant lacked the particularity required by the Fourth Amendment because it did not limit the search to specific materials or to a specific crime; (3) the extraction and search of the data from
The district court held a limited evidentiary hearing on the search of the cell phone. At the hearing, the district court heard from Officer Booth, who extracted the data from the cell phone, and Officer Oxford, who searched it.
Officer Booth testified that he reviewed the warrant and extracted the data for the search. Officer Booth explained that he first tried to perform more limited types of extractions known as a file extraction and a logical extraction, but they did not work on Mr. Palms’s cell phone because these extraction methods were blocked by the phone’s software or the carrier. He then resorted to the last extraction option available on the machine he was using, which was a broad physical extraction. Officer Booth did not contact any other agencies to help him limit his extraction because he believed they would have the same options he had. The physical extraction created a byte-for-byte copy of the cell phone with data and metadata. Officer Booth did not limit the search to certain types of files. He extracted all the data on the cell phone.
Officer Oxford testified about the methodology he used to search the data. He informally limited his search to the relevant time-period from September 2018, when Mr. Palms met M.W., to November 20, 2018, when they were arrested. His methodology involved viewing SMS messages, MMS messages, photographs, and emails.5 Sometimes he used the search function to search key words, but he also viewed the evidence in their locations on the cell phone to determine their context. When Officer Oxford saw something unrelated to the crime of human trafficking, he moved on quickly. At one point, Officer Oxford discovered privileged attorney-client communications, and he promptly stopped his search to contact the prosecutor. He did not come across evidence of any crimes other than human trafficking during the search.
After the evidentiary hearing, the district court denied Mr. Palms’s motion to suppress. The district court held the warrant satisfied the Fourth Amendment because it was supported by probable cause,6 and it was sufficiently particular because the search was reasonable under United States v. Loera, 923 F.3d 907 (10th Cir. 2019).
Alternatively, the district court determined both the officers relied in good faith on the warrant. Mr. Palms asked the district court to reconsider, but the district court denied that motion.
2. Motion in Limine
Under
The district court ultimately prohibited Mr. Palms from presenting evidence about M.W.’s prior sexual behavior under
At trial, M.W. testified that prostitution was “not something [she] would choose to do on [her] own,” ROA Vol. III at 1108. To diminish her credibility, Mr. Palms sought to introduce the evidence of her commercial sex acts prior to meeting Mr. Palms. With this evidence, Mr. Palms sought to dispute M.W.’s testimony about her fear of Mr. Palms when he identified himself as a pimp and the impression that Mr. Palms taught her how prostitution works and how to post solicitation ads online. The district court denied the request, stating the evidence of prior sexual behavior was irrelevant to whether Mr. Palms forced her to advertise and perform commercial sex acts in 2018.
3. Trial and Conviction
In December 2019, the Government tried the charges against Mr. Palms to a jury, but the jury could not reach a verdict. The district court declared a mistrial, and at the Government’s request, set the case for retrial. Prior to the second trial, the Government obtained a superseding indictment containing all three of the original charges and two additional charges: transporting an individual for prostitution in violation of
During the second trial, the district court granted a motion for acquittal as to Count Five (online promotion and facilitation of prostitution), but it sent the rest of the charges to the jury. The jury acquitted Mr. Palms on Count Three (retaliation against a victim and causing bodily harm) and found him guilty on Counts One (sex trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion), Two (attempted obstruction of sex trafficking enforcement), and Four (transporting
II. DISCUSSION
On appeal, Mr. Palms challenges the district court’s decisions to admit the cell phone evidence and to exclude evidence that M.W. engaged in commercial sex acts before she met Mr. Palms. We undertake our analysis by first considering whether the search and seizure of Mr. Palms’s cell phone satisfied the requirements articulated in the Fourth Amendment. Then, we review the district court’s exclusion of the sexual behavior evidence under
A. Search and Seizure
Mr. Palms appeals the district court’s decision denying the motion to suppress the evidence obtained from his cell phone because (1) the warrant was invalid under the Fourth Amendment and (2) the search was unreasonable. When reviewing a district court’s denial of a motion to suppress, we “view the evidence in the light most favorable to the government and accept the district court’s factual findings unless they are clearly erroneous.” United States v. Grimmett, 439 F.3d 1263, 1268 (10th Cir. 2006). But we review de novo the ultimate question of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment. Loera, 923 F.3d at 915.
1. Applicable Law
The Fourth Amendment provides,
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and 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.
2. Warrant Particularity Requirement
Mr. Palms argues the warrant was not constitutionally valid because it did not particularly describe the things to be seized even though it was limited to evidence of human trafficking.8 Thus, we must determine whether “the crime of human trafficking” is a sufficiently specific crime such that a warrant’s limitation to
The Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement “ensures that the search will be carefully tailored to its justifications[] and will not take on the character of the wide-ranging exploratory searches the Framers intended to prohibit.” United States v. Otero, 563 F.3d 1127, 1131–32 (10th Cir. 2009) (quoting Maryland v. Garrison, 480 U.S. 79, 84 (1987)). Because computers can contain enormous amounts of information and relevant evidence can be stored in any location, the Fourth Amendment requires warrants for computer searches to “affirmatively limit the search to evidence of specific . . . crimes or specific types of material.” Id. at 1132 (quotation marks omitted).9 The same standard applies to cell phones because they are essentially “minicomputers that also happen to have the capacity to be used as a telephone.” United States v. Russian, 848 F.3d 1239, 1245 (10th Cir. 2017) (quoting Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373, 393 (2014)).
The guiding purpose of this standard is to establish practical guidelines about what can be searched and seized, leaving nothing to the discretion of the officers executing the warrant. United States v. Leary, 846 F.2d 592, 600 (10th Cir. 1988) (“A description is sufficiently particular when it enables the searcher to reasonably ascertain and identify the things authorized to be seized.” (quotation marks omitted)). Thus, “practical accuracy rather than technical precision controls the determination of whether a search warrant adequately describes the place to be searched.” Otero, 563 F.3d at 1132 (quotation marks omitted).
As Mr. Palms contends, the warrant was not limited to any specific types of materials, such as text messages, emails, or pictures. Rather, the warrant said the information to be searched and seized “include[d], but [was] not limited to, all digital evidence stored on removable storage and magnetic or electronic data contained in the contents of such tablet, cell phone, laptop, camera and/or memory cards.” ROA Vol. I at 68. Such a broad authorization is permissible under our precedent, so long as the warrant contained some “limiting principle.” See Russian, 848 F.3d at 1245.
The Government contends the warrant contained such a limitation because it permitted the officers to search and seize only evidence of “human trafficking.” But Mr. Palms argues “human trafficking” is not sufficiently specific because the warrant did not cite a specific criminal statute and because human trafficking is a broad term that gave the officers “carte blanche to search and seize anything in the phone’s contents they believed might pertain in any way to any human trafficking, at any time, whether for forced labor, for sex, for drug trafficking, or anything else arguably tied to the broad universe of ‘human trafficking.’” Aplt. Opening Br. at 18. We disagree.
To be sufficiently particular, search warrants do not have to identify specific statutes for the crimes to which
The warrant here is sufficiently limited. Oklahoma state law explicitly prohibits “human trafficking.”
Although Oklahoma’s definition of “human trafficking” includes both types of human trafficking—sex trafficking and labor trafficking10—it is still a sufficiently specific, defined crime. See, e.g., United States v. Burgess, 576 F.3d 1078, 1083, 1091 (10th Cir. 2009) (holding a warrant was sufficiently particular when it authorized a search for evidence of the sale of any illegal controlled substance even though probable cause for the warrant was based on evidence of marijuana and cocaine). It therefore does not run afoul of our rejection of warrants that broadly encompass “any crime.” Cf. Otero, 563 F.3d at 1132–33 (holding a warrant was not particular when it had “no limiting instruction whatsoever” and authorized “a wide-ranging search of [the appellant]’s computer”); Cassady v. Goering, 567 F.3d 628, 635–36 (10th Cir. 2009) (holding a warrant was not particular when there was only “probable cause to search for evidence related to marijuana cultivation, yet the warrant authorized the seizure of all possible evidence of any crime in any jurisdiction”).
Because Oklahoma law labels the crime as “human trafficking,” and there is no separate “sex trafficking” crime, it is “difficult to imagine how the . . . warrant could have been phrased more specifically.” United States v. Le, 173 F.3d 1258, 1275 (10th Cir. 1999). Indeed, the Oklahoma state judge who issued the warrant and the Tulsa police officers who executed it would have understood human trafficking to be a specific crime. And most importantly,
3. Reasonableness of the Search and Seizure
After obtaining a warrant, the officers “must conduct their search ‘strictly within the bounds set by the warrant.’” Loera, 923 F.3d at 916 (quoting Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Fed. Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388, 395 n.7 (1971)). “Determining whether a search exceeds the scope of its authorizing warrant is, like most inquiries under the Fourth Amendment, an exercise in reasonableness assessed on a case-by-case basis.” Id. In general, “investigators executing a warrant can look anywhere where evidence described in the warrant might conceivably be located.” Id. (citing United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 824 (1982)). However, that limitation can be difficult to enforce in a computer search where relevant data could be stored anywhere. See id.
To address this problem, we have focused on how the computer search was conducted rather than what was searched.12 See id. at 917. “Shifting our focus in this way is necessary in the electronic search context because search warrants typically contain few—if any—restrictions on where within a computer or other electronic storage device the government is permitted to search.” Id. (emphasis in original). The reasonableness of the search method “depends on the particular facts of a given case.” Id. at 920.
Mr. Palms first argues the extraction of information from his cell phone was too broad. Officer Booth testified he could not perform a more limited file extraction or a logical extraction on Mr. Palms’s cell phone, so he conducted a broad physical extraction of the entire contents and metadata. And Officer Booth testified that seeking help from other agencies would have been pointless because he believed they had the same extraction options as he had. He therefore extracted a byte-for-byte copy of the contents of the cell phone and captured a vast amount of information, including personal information unrelated to the suspected crime.
Mr. Palms also argues the search of the extracted data should have been limited so that the officers could not view any information that was not related to the suspected crime. The district court found that Officer Oxford limited his search to the time after Mr. Palms met M.W. The court also determined that Officer Oxford
We have previously found a similar extraction and search to be reasonable. In United States v. Burgess, the officers obtained a warrant to search the defendant’s property for evidence of controlled substances. 576 F.3d at 1083. During the search, the officers found a hard drive and searched it. To begin the search, they “ma[d]e a byte-for-byte copy of the hard drive.” Id. at 1084. Although this process captured information beyond the scope of the warrant, we did not hold the search was unreasonable. Id. at 1095. Rather, we explained that the broad extraction was consistent with the reality that evidence of the crime could be found in various file types. Id. at 1093. The search of the extracted files then proceeded with the focus on files that might contain evidence of drug trafficking. Id. at 1094–95. The officers viewed files even if they were not obviously labeled with titles related to the suspected crime to confirm they had not been deceptively labeled, but if the file did not contain relevant evidence, the officers moved on immediately. Id. at 1094–95. In Burgess, we concluded the extraction and the search were reasonable. Id. at 1095.
We reach the same conclusion here. As in Burgess, the evidence of human trafficking in this case could have taken many forms, such as text messages, emails, photographs, internet history, and transaction applications. For this reason, the warrant did not limit the search to one type of information contained on the cell phone. And the physical extraction of all the data from the cell phone was reasonable. Likewise, Officer Oxford limited his search to the time-period when Mr. Palms knew M.W. and viewed the types of files that were most likely to contain evidence of the crime of human trafficking. When he came across unrelated personal information or communications, he quickly moved to the next thing. And when he came across privileged attorney-client communications, he immediately stopped his search and contacted the prosecutor. This search methodology was sufficiently limited. Therefore, both the extraction and the search methodology were reasonable.
Because the warrant and the search of the cell phone complied with the Fourth Amendment, we affirm the district court’s denial of the motion to suppress.
B. Federal Rule of Evidence 412
Mr. Palms argues the district court erred by excluding evidence of M.W.’s prior commercial sex work under
“To the extent the challenge to the exclusion of evidence proffered by the defendant is based on a constitutional objection . . . we review the district court’s ruling excluding that evidence de novo.” United States v. Pablo, 696 F.3d 1280, 1297 (10th Cir. 2012). Otherwise, a district court’s ruling on the admissibility of evidence is reviewed for abuse of discretion. United States v. A.S., 939 F.3d 1063, 1071 (10th Cir. 2019).
1. Applicable Law
Under
As relevant here, defendants have constitutional rights to due process and to confront witnesses against them. The Fifth Amendment provides, “[n]o person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of the law.”
The Sixth Amendment provides, “[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to be confronted with the witnesses against him.”
Together, the Fifth and Sixth Amendments provide defendants with the
2. Analysis
Mr. Palms argues the exclusion of evidence that M.W. understood and participated in commercial sex work before she met him violated his constitutional rights to a fair trial, to confront witnesses against him, and to present a full defense. First, he argues the sexual behavior evidence is relevant because it “tends to counter” the Government’s assertion that Mr. Palms “enticed or recruited” M.W. to perform commercial sex acts—an element of Count One. Aplt. Opening Br. at 28. Second, he argues the evidence would “impeach the credibility of” M.W. Id. at 30.
Pursuant to the Confrontation Clause and the Due Process Clause, sexual behavior evidence “may be required to be admitted . . . where relevant and probative on a central issue of sexual offense charges.” A.S., 939 F.3d at 1072 (quotation marks omitted). Evidence is considered relevant if it “has any tendency to make a fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence.”
Mr. Palms’s first argument is not persuasive because the sexual behavior evidence is not probative of a central issue in this case. Evidence that a sex trafficking victim previously engaged in prostitution is irrelevant to whether that victim was forced or coerced into working as a prostitute at a later date. See
III. CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the convictions.
McHUGH
Circuit Judge