State v. Camacho
| Decision Date | 29 November 2022 |
| Docket Number | 49034 |
| Parties | STATE OF IDAHO, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. CESAR RAUL CAMACHO, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Idaho Court of Appeals |
UNPUBLISHED OPINION
Appeal from the District Court of the Fourth Judicial District State of Idaho, Ada County. Hon. Samuel A. Hoagland, District Judge.
Judgment of conviction for eluding a police officer with a persistent violator enhancement, affirmed.
Eric D. Fredericksen, State Appellate Public Defender; Jacob L Westerfield, Deputy Appellate Public Defender, Boise, for appellant.
Hon Lawrence G. Wasden, Attorney General; Kacey L. Jones, Deputy Attorney General, Boise, for respondent.
Cesar Raul Camacho appeals from his judgment of conviction for eluding a police officer, Idaho Code § 49-1404(2), with a persistent violator enhancement, I.C. § 19-2514, and challenges the district court's denial of his motion to suppress. We affirm.
Detectives Carter and Holland are members of Boise City's Special Operations Unit (SOU), which investigates suspected drug trafficking. Based on investigations in 2018 and 2019, the detectives believed, among other things, that Camacho was a member of the Mexican Mafia gang, had a criminal history, frequently traveled to Boise for drug trafficking purposes, and was seeking to recover approximately 12 pounds of stolen methamphetamine in Boise. On June 6, 2019, the detectives obtained information indicating that Camacho was in Boise.
Believing that Camacho posed an immediate threat of harm to certain individuals potentially involved in stealing the methamphetamine, Detective Holland requested a third-party service provider to use Global Positioning System (GPS) data to "ping" Camacho's cell phone to reveal his real-time location.[1] The first ping indicated Camacho was in the general location of a hotel on Broadway Avenue in Boise. A second ping indicated that the first ping was not a "fleeting ping" and that Camacho was in the same location rather than moving. Officers confirmed with a hotel employee that Camacho was staying at the hotel, obtained his room number, and began surveilling the hotel parking lot and a nearby truck stop.
During this surveillance, Camacho left the hotel in a rental car. Officers followed him until he pulled into a fast-food restaurant's drive-through lane. When Camacho saw an officer approaching him, he accelerated through the drive-through lane, hit a police car, and sped away. Thereafter, Detective Holland requested a ping of Camacho's cell phone every fifteen minutes. That evening, officers located and arrested Camacho after he fled on foot.
The following day, officers requested and obtained a search warrant for Camacho's hotel room where they found a loaded firearm, cocaine, heroin, and drug paraphernalia. Later, a grand jury indicted Camacho for conspiracy to traffic in heroin, conspiracy to traffic in methamphetamine, possession of a controlled substance (cocaine), possession of a controlled substance (heroin), possession of drug paraphernalia, eluding a police officer, and resisting and obstructing. Further, the State alleged Camacho was a persistent violator. At the State's request, the district court consolidated Camacho's case for trial with the cases of four other defendants.
Camacho filed a motion to suppress, arguing that the State's "acquisition of cell-site data was an unlawful search under the Fourth Amendment" and that "no exigent circumstances justif[ied] the warrantless search of [his] cell-site data and of his person." The State responded that pinging Camacho's cell phone was not a search, or alternatively, that if it were a search, exigent circumstances justified the search. The district court held an evidentiary hearing over the course of three days. During the hearing, the court heard the testimony of three law enforcement officers, including Detectives Carter and Holland, and admitted into evidence the affidavit for the search warrant of Camacho's hotel room, a supplemental affidavit, the return of the search warrant, the search warrant, and the audio recordings of jailhouse phone calls related to the stolen drugs.
Following the hearing, the district court issued a written decision denying Camacho's suppression motion. It concluded that "obtaining ping tracking data from [Camacho's] cell phone provider constituted a search that required a warrant" but that "there were exigent circumstances justifying the warrantless search." Camacho conditionally pled guilty to eluding a police officer with a persistent violator enhancement and reserved his right to appeal the denial of his suppression motion. Camacho timely appeals
The standard of review of a suppression motion is bifurcated. When a decision on a motion to suppress is challenged, we accept the trial court's findings of fact that are supported by substantial evidence, but we freely review the application of constitutional principles to the facts as found. State v. Atkinson, 128 Idaho 559, 561, 916 P.2d 1284, 1286 (Ct. App. 1996). At a suppression hearing, the power to assess the credibility of witnesses, resolve factual conflicts, weigh evidence, and draw factual inferences is vested in the trial court. State v. Valdez-Molina, 127 Idaho 102, 106, 897 P.2d 993, 997 (1995); State v. Schevers, 132 Idaho 786, 789, 979 P.2d 659, 662 (Ct. App. 1999).
On appeal, Camacho challenges the district court's ruling that exigent circumstances justified pinging his cell phone to disclose his real-time location. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.[2] Carpenter v. United States, ___ U.S. ___, ___, 138 S.Ct. 2206, 2213 (2018).
The State may overcome this presumption by demonstrating that a warrantless search fell within a well-recognized exception to the warrant requirement. Id. at ___, 138 S.Ct. at 2221. One such exception is when exigent circumstances are so compelling that a warrantless search is objectively reasonable. Id. at ___, 138 S.Ct. at 2222. "Such exigencies include the need to pursue a fleeing suspect, protect individuals who are threatened with imminent harm, or prevent imminent destruction of evidence." Id. at ___, 138 S.Ct. at 2223; see also State v. Sessions, 165 Idaho 658, 661, 450 P.3d 306, 309 (2019) ( emergency aid exception to protect against imminent injury or aid injured individual); State v. Holton, 132 Idaho 501, 504, 975 P.2d 789, 792 (1999) ().
Two essential requirements of the exigent circumstances exception are a compelling need for official action and no time to secure a warrant. State v. Blancas, 170 Idaho 631, 636, 515 P.3d 718, 722 (2022). Whether exigent circumstances exist to justify a warrantless search is determined on a case-by-case basis and turns on "whether the totality of circumstances would lead a reasonable officer to believe that immediate action was necessary." Id. at 637, 515 P.3d at 723. The nature of the exigency justifying the intrusion must strictly circumscribe the warrantless search. State v. Townsend, 160 Idaho 885, 888, 380 P.3d 698, 701 (Ct. App. 2016).
Neither the United States Supreme Court nor Idaho appellate courts have previously addressed whether requesting a third-party service provider to ping a cell phone to determine an individual's real-time location based on GPS data constitutes a search for purposes of the Fourth Amendment, and if so, what circumstances justify obtaining this information without a warrant. See, e.g., Carpenter, ___U.S. at ___, 138 S.Ct. at 2220 (). The State, however, does not challenge the district court's conclusion that "pinging" Camacho's cell phone to determine his real-time location using GPS data was a warrantless search. Thus, for purposes of resolving Camacho's appeal, we assume--without deciding--that it was a warrantless search.
On appeal, Camacho cites several cases, including Idaho case law, addressing whether exigent circumstances justified a warrantless search of a residence or a hotel room. See, e.g., Sessions, 165 Idaho at 661-62, 450 P.3d at 309-10 (concluding exigent circumstances did not exist to enter home under emergency aid exception); State v. Heard, 158 Idaho 667, 670, 350 P.3d 1044, 1047 (Ct. App. 2015) (); State v. Barrett, 138 Idaho 290, 294, 62 P.3d 214, 218 (Ct. App. 2003) (). Because these cases address circumstances dissimilar to pinging a cell phone to determine an individual's real-time location, they are not factually instructive.
Courts in other jurisdictions, however, have ruled that exigent circumstances justified pinging a defendant's cell phone without a warrant. These cases identify the types of exigent circumstances justifying such a warrantless search, like threats of violence and gang-related drug trafficking. For example, in United States v. Hobbs, 24 F.4th 965 967 (4th Cir. 2022), the Fourth Circuit concluded exigent circumstances justified pinging a defendant's cell phone because he had a criminal history of violent offenses; was armed; and had threatened imminent harm to numerous people, including his former girlfriend, her child, and law enforcement officers. In United States v. Banks, 884 F.3d 998, 1012 (10th Circ. 2018), the Tenth Circuit concluded exigent circumstances justified pinging a defendant's cell phone because officers knew the defendant "was associated with a 'violent street gang,'" "had a history of violent behavior,"...
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