UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff, v. CORY SPURLOCK, Defendant.
Case No. 3:23-cr-00022-MMD-CLB-1
April 11, 2025
ORDER
I. SUMMARY
Defendant Cory Spurlock was indicted for a murder-for-hire conspiracy and conspiracy to distribute marijuana. (ECF No. 1.) The fifth superseding indictment charges eight counts involving three deaths (victims J.S., W.L., and Y.L.).1 (ECF No. 363.) Before the Court are two motions to suppress evidence, specifically: (1) Spurlock‘s motion to suppress tower dump data obtained in response to a warrant and the derivative use of that data (ECF No. 254);2 and (2) Spurlock‘s motion to suppress evidence collected during a consent search from 27 Red Rock Drive (ECF No. 257).3 The Court held an evidentiary hearing on the tower dump motion—along with another motion not addressed in this order—on April 9, 2025 (the “Hearing“).4 (ECF No. 362 (hearing minutes).)
As to the motion to suppress regarding the tower dump, the Court finds that a tower dump is a search and the warrant law enforcement used to get it is a general warrant forbidden under the Fourth Amendment. That said, because the Court appears to be the first court within the Ninth Circuit to reach this conclusion and the good faith exception otherwise applies, the Court will not order any evidence suppressed. The Court will deny the motion regarding the search of 27 Red Rock Drive because Spurlock had objectively abandoned
II. DISCUSSION
The Court addresses both motions in the order they were filed, below, beginning with the motion to suppress tower dump data.
A. Motion to Suppress Tower Dump Data
Spurlock moves to suppress all the evidence collected using warrant 20-SW-56, along with all the evidence collected using some 90 additional warrants that referred to 20-SW-56 or evidence collected based on it. (ECF No. 254 at 26-29.) Spurlock argues that the tower dump—further explained below, but basically records from all cell phones that connected to the cell towers closest to two locations specified in the warrant during a specified time period—is a search under the Fourth Amendment, warrant 20-SW-56 is a general warrant categorically forbidden by the Fourth Amendment, the warrant is overbroad and lacking in probable cause, and the good faith exception does not apply. (Id. at 11-25.) The government counters with an onion of alternative arguments: there was no Fourth Amendment search; the warrant was supported by probable cause; law enforcement relied on the warrants in good faith; the cell tower data was obtained through independently lawful means; and the relevant evidence obtained in response to the tower dump warrant would have inevitably been discovered in any event. (ECF No. 298 at 1-2.)
The Court agrees with Spurlock that a tower dump is a search and warrant 20-SW-56 is an impermissible general warrant, but finds the good faith exception applies and, alternatively, suppression is unwarranted because the requesting law enforcement officer got a warrant, and the warrant he got was not unconstitutional at the time it issued.
The Court first includes below its pertinent findings of fact and then provides its legal analysis.
1. Findings of Fact5
On November 13, 2020, Sergeant Magdeleno Hernandez of the Mono County Sheriff‘s Office applied for a search warrant to the Honorable Mark Magit, Mono County Superior Court Judge.6 (ECF No. 254-2 at 2, 5, 7.) Judge Magit granted the application that same day, assigning the warrant the identifier 20-SW-56. (Id. at 5.) According to his affidavit, Sergeant Hernandez was investigating the suspected homicide of two people found on the side of U.S. Highway 395 north of Bridgeport, California on the morning of November 9, 2020. (Id. at 9.) He and unspecified other deputies who went to investigate the bodies, later identified as W.L. and Y.L., found that they had been shot and stabbed. (Id. 9-10.) They also found a cell phone near the victims that the investigating officers determined belonged to one of them. (Id. at 9.)
Sergeant Hernandez explained in his affidavit that all this information led him to believe that the person or people who killed W.L. and Y.L. were using cell phones around the time of the suspected crime. (Id.) He accordingly requested a warrant to get ‘tower dump data’ from cell towers around the mile markers where the bodies and the vehicle had been found (as specified by GPS coordinates) between the hours of 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. on the evening of November 8, 2020 (a window of time around the time he thought the killings occurred). (Id. at 10-11.) He further explained that the rural location, the time of day, and the fact that most people carry cell phones with them made it more likely that this tower dump data would lead to phone numbers associated with the person or people who killed W.L. and Y.L. (Id.)
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The warrant specifically ordered Verizon and AT&T to produce the following information to Sergeant Hernandez:7
a. Tower Dump/Download records from all cell-sites and their related sectors that cover the immediate area of US Highway 395 around mile marker 84.5 and US Highway 395 around mile marker 74.5 (see GPS Coordinates listed above) that would support any and all communications including; voice calls, text messages, any data connections, and any available HLR (Home Local Registry) or VLR (Visitor Local Registry) records showing subscriber equipment that were idle but still connected to the provider‘s network (on but not placing a call, text, or data connection but were in the same area as referenced above connecting to the network).
b. Records identifying the device (make and model), phone numbers associated with any communications, locations, date, times, duration of all calls, text messages, and data connections identified in response to item “a,” above.
c. Records showing the addresses and/or map GPS coordinates of all cell sites identified as having active connections in item “a.” above and maps with markings showing the location of each cell site and the theoretical wireless coverage area provided by each site, commonly called an RF footprint and/or propagation map.
d. Any records of equipment failures, maintenance, cell site overloads, or other outages that tend to show whether any of the listed cell sites were not operating normally during the specified time period.
(Id. at 3.) The ‘target of warrant’ was listed as, “[a]ny subjects related to active homicide investigation.” (Id. at 4.) Other investigating officers subsequently used some evidence received in response to warrant 20-SW-56 to obtain many other warrants ultimately leading to some evidence implicating Spurlock in the crimes he has since been charged with.8 (ECF Nos. 254
Within the Mono County Sheriff‘s Office, Investigator Pelichowski was the person who analyzed the information the Sheriff‘s Office got back from Verizon in response to warrant 20-SW-56. He accessed a working copy of the return materials provided in an Excel spreadsheet and manually examined the phone numbers listed in it, eventually connecting several of the phone numbers he found there with people of interest through other detective work. At the time, he did not have access to any software that would have helped him analyze the data. He just manually looked for phone numbers of interest in the Excel sheet and ran those phone numbers through a third-party public records database his department subscribed to.9 He further testified that he has since gotten more familiar with the type of data they got in response to the warrant, but at the time, this was all new to him. Similarly, Sergeant Hernandez testified this was the first tower dump search warrant application he had written. He consulted with Investigator Pelichowski and others in the Sheriff‘s Office, along with an investigator from the Mono County District Attorney‘s office, before drafting the warrant application. The investigator from the Mono County District Attorney‘s office gave him the idea to write a tower dump warrant application. Said otherwise, this was an unusual type of warrant application that they were not very familiar with at the time.
Judge Magit also testified that this tower dump warrant application was unusual. He estimated that he has granted 350-450 warrants since taking the bench in 2011, but as of 2020, when he granted this warrant application, had only seen four or five tower dump warrant applications. He had no specific recollection of issuing warrant 20-SW-56, but refreshed his recollection about it to prepare for the Hearing and answered the questions posed to him about it that he felt he could. Consistently with Sergeant Hernandez and Investigator Pelichowski, Judge Magit further testified Mono County is very rural, with only approximately 13,000 residents spread over a very large land area—and homicides are rare. Thus, all three witnesses remembered this double homicide. More generally, Judge Magit testified that he would guess he denies 10%-20% of all warrant applications he receives, and of those applications that were subsequently re-submitted after denial, he denied a few but probably less than 20%. He could not specifically recall if he had ever denied an application for a tower dump warrant.
Spurlock‘s expert Ms. Guay examined the same records Investigator Pelichowski got in response to warrant 20-SW-56 in
2. Legal Analysis
The Court now addresses below the legal issues raised in Spurlock‘s motion in the order he presented them.
a. Fourth Amendment Search
While Sergeant Hernandez got warrant 20-SW-56 asking Verizon and AT&T for information about the phones that connected to cell towers near two miles markers on US Highway 395 during a six-hour period on November 8, 2020 (ECF No. 254-2 at 3), Spurlock nevertheless leads off in his motion by arguing that this ‘tower dump’ is a search under the Fourth Amendment (ECF No. 254 at 11-14). The government counters it is not. (ECF No. 298 at 8-11.) The Court agrees with Spurlock.
In Carpenter, 585 U.S. 296, the Supreme Court held that individuals maintain a legitimate expectation of privacy in records of their physical movements as captured through cell-site location information (“CSLI“), that obtaining seven days of historical CSLI from a wireless provider without a warrant was a search, that accessing 127 days of historical CSLI invaded the defendant‘s reasonable expectation of privacy, and thus the government must get a warrant supported by probable cause before obtaining CSLI from a wireless carrier. See generally id. However, the Supreme Court in Carpenter did “not express a view on matters not before us: real-time CSLI or ‘tower dumps’ (a download of information on all the devices that connected to a particular cell site during a particular interval).” Id. at 316.
According to the parties—as confirmed by the Court‘s own research—neither the Supreme Court nor the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has answered the question left open by Carpenter and pertinent here since Carpenter was decided.11 So, is a ‘tower dump,’ like Sergeant Hernandez requested, a search? In arguing that it is, Spurlock points the Court towards the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit‘s opinion regarding geofence warrants in United States v. Smith, 110 F.4th 817 (5th Cir. 2024) and a recent decision from a Magistrate Judge in Mississippi extending Smith to some applications for tower dump warrants like the warrant at issue here in In re Four Applications for Search Warrants Seeking Info. Associated with Particular Cellular Towers, No. 3:25-CR-38-CWR-ASH, 2025 WL 603000 (S.D. Miss. Feb. 21, 2025) (”Four Applications“). (ECF No. 254 at 11-13.) In these decisions, the Fifth Circuit found that Google location history data obtained using a geofence warrant constituted a Fourth Amendment search, see Smith, 110 F.4th at 836, and as noted, the Four Applications
court extended Smith to tower dump warrant applications, see generally 2025 WL 603000.
The Court finds these two cases persuasive. To start, the government does not even address Four Applications in its response to the motion and did not attempt to meaningfully distinguish Smith.12 (ECF No. 298.) And in Four Applications, the Magistrate Judge explicitly extended Smith from the context of a geofence warrant to applications for tower dump warrants, reasoning that the applicable warrants sought essentially the same type of information at issue in Smith and finding that a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy, “as to the record of his location at particular moments in time that a tower dump would reveal[.]” Four Applications, 2025 WL 603000, at *5. The Four Applications court went on to find that the data revealed from tower dumps was sufficiently intrusive to warrant Fourth Amendment protection even if it involved less data than in Carpenter, and rejected application of the third party doctrine because, “tower-dump warrant applications do not implicate the sort of opt-in procedure that split the Fourth and Fifth Circuits in the geofence cases.” Id. at *6. Thus, Four Applications is factually analogous, and both addresses and rejects the primary arguments the government raises in response to the motion.13 (ECF No. 298 at 8-11.)
The Four Applications court‘s point about the involuntary nature of the location data obtained from a tower dump warrant also highlights why the Court finds Smith more persuasive than United States v. Chatrie, 107 F.4th 319, 330 (4th Cir. 2024), the Fourth Circuit case referred to in the quotation above. But before the Court elaborates, the Court
must note that Chatrie is not currently good law because the Fourth Circuit granted rehearing en banc in that case, see No. 22-4489, 2024 WL 4648102 (4th Cir. Nov. 1, 2024), but has not yet issued its en banc decision. Smith is nonetheless more persuasive than Chatrie because in Smith, the Fifth Circuit rejected the application of the third party doctrine (distinguishing Chatrie) for the commonsense reason that, “electronic opt-in processes are hardly informed and, in many instances, may not even be voluntary.” Smith, 110 F.4th at 835. The Court agrees—“[a]s anyone with a smartphone can attest[.]” Id. And tower dump warrants are moreover distinguishable
In addition, the Court also finds persuasive Smith‘s second reason for distinguishing Chatrie: “[w]hile it is true that geofences tend to be limited temporally, the potential intrusiveness of even a snapshot of precise location data should not be understated.” Smith, 110 F.4th at 833. Like the Smith court, the Court will not understate the potential intrusiveness of the location data at issue here. Sergeant Hernandez and Investigator Pelichowski got location data on over 1600 people who neither consented nor were likely even aware that their location was being tracked as they moved through the area specified in the warrant application during the time also specified in it.
For these same reasons, the Court rejects the government‘s unpersuasive argument that the records obtained using warrant 20-SW-56 do not constitute a Fourth Amendment search because they are less invasive than the records at issue in Carpenter. (ECF No. 298 at 8-11.) The Court will instead follow Smith as extended to tower dumps in Four Applications. And the non-binding cases the government relies on in this section of its response do not convince the Court otherwise. United States v. Adkinson, 916 F.3d 605, 610 (7th Cir. 2019) is a private party search exception case. There, someone was robbing some T-Mobile stores in a similar way, so T-Mobile dumped its own towers and then turned the results over to law enforcement. See id. at 608. Here, of course, Sergeant Hernandez got a warrant asking Verizon and AT&T for this information. And United States v. Hammond, 996 F.3d 374, 387-92 (7th Cir. 2021) dealt with real-time CSLI, not tower dump data like the data at issue here. Moreover, the Court agrees with Spurlock (ECF No. 338 at 3-4) that Hammond is against the weight of authority. See, e.g., United States v. Broderick, No. 5:22-CR-00251-EJD-1, 2024 WL 295293, at *6 (N.D. Cal. Jan. 25, 2024) (“many courts in this District and across the country have found that [Carpenter‘s] reasoning applies to real-time CSLI.“), appeal dismissed, No. 24-1002, 2024 WL 2559466 (9th Cir. Feb. 29, 2024). The Court accordingly rejects as unpersuasive the government‘s argument that because Hammond found real-time CSLI not subject to the Fourth Amendment, tower dump data is not either. Finally, the government cites Sanchez v. Los Angeles Dep‘t of Transportation, 39 F.4th 548, 560 (9th Cir. 2022) (ECF No. 298 at 10), but the pertinent section of that opinion turns on the fact that the plaintiff “knowingly and voluntarily disclosed location data to the e-scooter operators[.]” Sanchez, 39 F.4th at 559. Indeed, Sanchez specifically distinguished the rental e-scooters at issue there from the cell phones at issue here and in Carpenter because a cell phone
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In sum, the Court finds that the tower dump performed in response to warrant 20-SW-56 is a Fourth Amendment search. See Smith, 110 F.4th at 836 (“law enforcement in this case did conduct a search when it sought Location History data from Google“).
b. General Warrant
As mentioned, Spurlock proceeds to argue that warrant 20-SW-56 is a constitutionally forbidden general warrant or ‘writ of assistance’ because it, “seeks access to a vast array of private cellular phone data of a potentially unlimited number of people to identify a criminal suspect the police don‘t yet know about.” (ECF No. 254 at 15.) And indeed, Smith reached a conclusion consistent with Spurlock‘s argument, holding that “geofence warrants are general warrants categorically prohibited by the Fourth Amendment.” 110 F.4th at 838. The government counters that warrant 20-SW-56 was not a general warrant because Sergeant Hernandez‘s affidavit established probable cause and the warrant was sufficiently particularized. (ECF No. 298 at 14.)
But Smith also arose from an investigation where investigators obtained a warrant, and the Court has similar concerns with warrant 20-SW-56 to those that the Smith court expressed about the warrant there. Most notably, geofence warrants “never include a specific user to be identified, only a temporal and geographic location where any given user may turn up post-search.” Smith, 110 F.4th at 837 (emphasis in original). Similarly, here, the subject of warrant 20-SW-56 is, “[a]ny subjects related to active homicide investigation[.]” (ECF No. 254-2 at 4.) Moreover, it is uncontested that “the private data of 1,686 users were captured in [the] tower dump warrant.” (ECF No. 338 at 5.) And while the government argues that the “requested data was confined in date, time, and location” (ECF No. 298 at 13), “[a] general warrant cannot be saved simply by arguing that, after the search has been performed, the information received was narrowly tailored to the crime being investigated.” Smith, 110 F.4th at 837.
Taken together, the Court agrees with Spurlock that these characteristics of warrant application 20-SW-56 render it equivalent to a request for “access to an entire haystack because it may contain a needle.” Four Applications, 2025 WL 603000, at *8.
The Fourth Amendment “seeks to secure ‘the privacies of life’ against ‘arbitrary power[,]‘” and aims to “place obstacles in the way of a too permeating police surveillance.” Carpenter, 585 U.S. at 305 (citations omitted). A warrant that authorizes the search of anyone who was in a particular area during a particular time range is too permeating police surveillance. In sum, “the tower-dump search warrant[ at issue here is] materially indistinguishable from the geofence search warrant foreclosed by Smith.” Id. Warrant 20-SW-56 is a “general warrant[] categorically prohibited by the Fourth Amendment.” Smith, 110 F.4th at 838.14
Having determined that warrant 20-SW-56 is an unconstitutional general warrant, the Court “must address separately the question of whether exclusion is an appropriate remedy.” United States v. Elmore, 917 F.3d 1068, 1076 (9th Cir. 2019). And while suppression is generally unwarranted where a search warrant exists, “[t]he existence of a search warrant does not automatically preclude application of the exclusionary rule[.]” Id. In situations like this one, where Sergeant Hernandez got a warrant, the Court may suppress evidence if: (1) the issuing judge was misled; (2) the issuing judge acted as merely a rubber stamp; (3) the affidavit was so lacking in probable cause that it was unreasonable for the issuing judge to have found it; or (4) the warrant was so facially
deficient that executing officers could not have reasonably presumed it was valid. See United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 918, 923 (1984).
Spurlock argues that Judge Magit acted merely as a rubber stamp and the affidavit was so lacking in probable cause that it was unreasonable for Judge Magit to have found it. (ECF Nos. 254 at 23-25, 298 at 16-17 (summarizing and addressing Spurlock‘s argument).) The government counters that Judge Magit did not act as a rubber stamp because the date discrepancy is easily explained as a mistake on Sergeant Hernandez‘s part when dating his affidavit, and there was at least arguable probable cause for issuing the warrant. (Id.) The Court agrees with the government.
To start, the Court heard testimony from both Sergeant Hernandez and Judge Magit at the Hearing, and left the Hearing convinced that the date discrepancy was a simple mistake. Judge Magit testified that, while he did not specifically recall this warrant until he was contacted about it by the government in connection with the Hearing, he believed the correct date of the warrant was November 13, 2020 for three reasons: (1) he signed and dated it on November 13, 2020; (2) the clerk of his court also date stamped the order November 13, 2020, consistent with his practice of forwarding an approved warrant to be filed; and (3) in the body of the warrant, it asked for production of the data on November 19, 2020, which would not make sense if the warrant was not issued until November 20, 2020. He otherwise stated that law enforcement may not post-date warrants.15 The Court finds this testimony credible. Similarly, Sergeant Hernandez testified that he wrote the wrong date by accident when he signed his affidavit. To corroborate that he made a simple mistake, he stated that the clerk of court stamped the warrant November 13, 2020, and he wrote a supplemental narrative explaining his mistake that included the correct date. (See also ECF No. 298-1 (the supplemental narrative he referred to).) The Court also found Sergeant Hernandez‘s testimony that he simply made a
20, 2020, next to Sergeant Hernandez‘s signature in the application was a simple mistake. (ECF No. 254-2 at 12.) The correct date is November 13, 2020. (Id. at 2, 5, 7.) And for these reasons, this date discrepancy does not indicate that Judge Magit ‘rubber-stamped’ the warrant application.
The Court also heard from Judge Magit about the practices he would have followed before granting warrant 20-SW-56 and is convinced he did not rubber-stamp it for the reasons he provided at the Hearing as well.16 Judge Magit specifically noted the rural location where the two bodies were found and the time of day in retroactively confirming his conclusion that there was probable cause supporting issuance of the warrant. He similarly testified that the warrant was limited both in terms of time and location, which led him to find it was sufficiently particularized. Judge Magit also noted that while issuing tower dump warrants was unusual at the time he granted this application (he believes he had granted less than five at that time), so too was it unusual for local police to find evidence of a double homicide on the side of a rural highway in the county where he sits as a judge, implying that this extraordinary warrant was justified by extraordinary circumstances. More generally, Judge Magit testified that he never signed a warrant without an affidavit, or without first agreeing the requesting officer had established probable cause. And he otherwise testified that he would guess he denies about 20% of the warrant applications that come before him. Indeed, beyond not acting as a rubber stamp, Judge Magit‘s testimony also goes to the third and fourth reasons for potential application of the good faith exception: the warrant affidavit arguably contained probable cause and was not so facially deficient that no reasonable officer could execute it.
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And Judge Magit‘s testimony is consistent with the government‘s argument that there was at least arguable probable cause for issuing the warrant in the warrant application itself, so suppression is not warranted. Specifically, the warrant application noted clear indicia that a crime had been committed; dead bodies that had been shot and stabbed, with shell casings nearby. (ECF No. 254-2 at 9.) Moreover, Judge Magit testified that the warrant does limit how much data is collected in scope because, given the time limitation and the remoteness of the area, there would likely be a relatively small amount of data returned in response to it. The fact that the data returned from the warrant turned out to be more voluminous than he apparently expected does not undermine the fact that Judge Magit deliberated and found probable cause before issuing the warrant. Officer Hernandez further noted in the affidavit that the killings appeared to have taken place at night in a rural area, along with the fact that investigators found cell phones near the victims and in their car found on the other side of Bridgeport, which also had blood in it. (Id. at 9-11.) He otherwise noted that most people carry cell phones now, linking this to the fact that cell phones were found near the bodies and in the abandoned vehicle
d. Whether Suppression Is Otherwise Warranted
The Court otherwise notes a reluctance to suppress evidence when courts declare novel investigative techniques unconstitutional. See, e.g., Smith, 110 F.4th at 840 (“[W]e cannot fault law enforcement‘s actions considering the novelty of the technique and the dearth of court precedent to follow.“); Elmore, 917 F.3d at 1078 (“This is particularly true in light of the fact that in 2012, no circuit court had yet held the Fourth Amendment applicable to CSLI data.“). And the Court appears to be the first court within the Ninth Circuit to declare tower dump warrants unconstitutional general warrants. Even Smith, which does not bind the Court, was not decided until 2024. See generally 110 F.4th 817. Moreover, Smith is the first circuit decision finding geofence warrants unconstitutional. This being the case, neither Sergeant Hernandez nor Judge Magit can reasonably have been expected to refrain from seeking the warrant, or to refrain from issuing it, back in 2020. For this additional, alternative reason, the Court declines to suppress any evidence obtained in response to warrant 20-SW-56.
And because the Court declines to suppress any evidence returned from warrant 20-SW-56, the Court also declines to suppress any evidence returned from the approximately 90 (according to Spurlock) other warrants that may have relied at least in part on evidence obtained in response to warrant 20-SW-56.17 In sum, the Court will deny Spurlock‘s motion to suppress tower dump data.
B. Motion to Suppress Evidence from 27 Red Rock Drive
Spurlock also moves to suppress any evidence collected from a warehouse he was renting, which he identifies as 29 Red Rock Drive in his motion (ECF No. 257 at 1), though the government clarifies in response that the correct address is 27 Red Rock Drive (ECF No. 297 at 1 n.1).18 The Court will refer to it as 27 Red Rock Drive in this order because that is the correct address.
Spurlock‘s landlords’ daughter, H.M., who he corresponded with regarding the lease and other details after moving out, gave law enforcement permission to search the warehouse after she determined Spurlock had moved out. (ECF No. 257 at 3.) Spurlock argues for the suppression of the evidence gathered during this search because he was living in the warehouse, so it was his residence entitled to Fourth Amendment protection, and H.M. lacked both actual and apparent authority to consent
3. Findings of Fact
On June 4, 2020, Spurlock signed a one-year lease with Hans and Velveth Marty for about 3000 square feet of warehouse space at 27 Red Rock Road in Mound House, Nevada. (ECF No. 297-1 at 3, 12.) The lease specifies that Spurlock was going to use the warehouse for a furniture restoration business, and not anything else unless he got the Marty‘s written consent, and the other use was lawful. (Id. at 3.) H.M. is the Marty‘s daughter, and she lived with them in a house right next to the warehouse during the times pertinent to this motion. (ECF No. 257 at 2, 297 at 2-3.) H.M. also corresponded with Spurlock by email regarding the lease, including sending him a signed copy of the lease on June 6, 2020. (ECF No. 297-2 at 2.)
On June 19, 2020, H.M. again corresponded with Spurlock by email to let him know that they (she and her parents) could not let him keep an R.V. outside the warehouse. (Id. at 3.)
H.M. also took notes about Spurlock and his associates who used the warehouse. (ECF No. 297-3.) On June 23, she noted a fight between Spurlock, W.L., and others, which concluded in the evening with W.L. apparently moving out. (Id. at 3-4.) As part of that fight, she noted, “[w]e agreed to let [Spurlock] break the lease without paying for the remainder of the term.” Id. at 3. On July 2, movers and later W.L. came back to gather some more things from the warehouse. (Id. at 4.) On July 3, some men arrived in a semi truck from Brand X and removed more things from the warehouse with a forklift. (Id.) They left the lights on, and H.M. went into the warehouse that night to turn the lights off, finding a ‘mostly empty shop.’ (Id.) On July 4, H.M. called W.L., and W.L confirmed he was done moving out. (Id.)
This prompted H.M. to email Spurlock, telling him that W.L. moved out, but some things had been left behind, and the warehouse sustained some damage she intended to charge him for. (Id.; see also ECF No. 297-4 at 2-3.) She attached pictures of some of the damage and items left behind to the email she sent Spurlock. (Id. at 2-6.) Spurlock wrote back to her on July 5, 2020:
Have Hans call me as soon as possible. I‘m wondering if this series of emails means you were trying to deduct the minor cost of repairs out of the $4950 (July‘s rent paid in advance/security deposit/last months rent) and then the remainder will be returned to me? That‘s not what we agreed on upon our last conversation, do I‘m confused. I‘ll speak to him seeing as my contract is with him and his legal spouse.
(Id. at 7.)
Spurlock followed up on that email on July 11, 2020, writing:
Just following up with you. I have not received any response, so I‘m wondering if I might need to inform my attorney that this is escalating. If I am mistaken (and I sincerely hope I am), please just send me a signed copy of an AMICABLE lease termination, and we can conclude our interaction. I hope to hear from Hans and/or receive said termination by Monday evening. Thanks for your time.
(Id.)
The
I would go get those tubs full of your shit from the truck if I were you. They‘re outside and there are a lot of fucking crackheads. Those people have the keys to the shop and you can talk to them about getting all your tools down. I terminated the lease. It‘s done. Don‘t ever fucking contact me again.
(ECF No. 302 at 4.)
On July 14, 2020, H.M. sent an email to Carson City Detective Sam Hatley inviting him to come search the warehouse and collect any evidence from it before she and her parents moved forward with leasing it to someone else. (ECF Nos. 297 at 3, 297-5 at 2.)
She mentioned in that email that a private investigator had come to visit her the day before about a missing person, that she had noticed strange things happening while Spurlock had leased the warehouse, and concluded the email by offering to assist law enforcement in their investigation. (Id.) This is the email that led to the consent search Spurlock objects to in his motion to suppress. (ECF No. 297 at 3.)
4. Legal Analysis
“[T]he demonstration of a legitimate expectation of privacy ‘is a threshold standing requirement, and analysis cannot proceed further without its establishment.‘” United States v. Singleton, 987 F.2d 1444, 1449 (9th Cir. 1993) (quoting United States v. Cruz-Jimenez, 894 F.2d 1, 5 (1st Cir. 1990)). “Where a defendant depends on a ‘reasonable expectation of privacy,’ two elements must be met: (1) that he had ‘an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy,’ and (2) that his subjective expectation is ‘objectively reasonable‘—i.e., that it is an expectation ‘that society is prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable.‘” United States v. Fisher, 56 F.4th 673, 686 (9th Cir. 2022) (citation omitted). People who voluntarily abandon property lack standing to complain of its search or seizure, and whether they have abandoned property presents a factual question focusing on the person‘s words, acts, or other objective indications that the person has relinquished a reasonable expectation of privacy in the property at the time of the search or seizure. See id. at 686.
Spurlock had voluntarily abandoned the warehouse at 27 Red Rock Road by the time H.M. gave police permission to search it. After witnessing an argument between Spurlock and W.L. (and others), H.M had the impression from Spurlock and W.L. that they were moving out, and she and her parents even told Spurlock he could break the lease without penalty. (ECF No. 297-3.) W.L. confirmed to H.M. that he had moved out by July 4, 2020. (Id. at 4.) H.M. emailed Spurlock that same day, and he emailed her back on July 5, 2020, objecting that she was going to deduct money from an amount he had paid that he himself characterized as “last months [sic] rent.” (ECF No. 297-4 at 7.) Spurlock sent H.M. another email on July 11, 2020, following up on his apparent request to get his whole security deposit back, requesting an ‘amicable’ lease termination. (Id.) There is no evidence that H.M saw Spurlock on the property after June 23, 2020. And the government otherwise alleges that Spurlock told W.L. on Signal sometime in late June or early July that he had “terminated the lease.” (ECF No. 302 at 4.)
III. CONCLUSION
The Court notes that the parties made several arguments and cited to several cases not discussed above. The Court has reviewed these arguments and cases and determines that they do not warrant discussion as they do not affect the outcome of the motions before the Court.
It is further ordered that Spurlock‘s motion to suppress tower dump data (ECF No. 254) is denied.
It is further ordered that Spurlock‘s motion to suppress evidence from 27 Red Rock Drive (ECF No. 257) is denied.
DATED THIS 11th Day of April 2025.
MIRANDA M. DU
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE