State v. Harris
| Decision Date | 28 April 2022 |
| Docket Number | CC 20CR28186 (SC S068481) |
| Parties | STATE of Oregon, Appellant, v. Langston Amani HARRIS, Respondent. |
| Court | Oregon Supreme Court |
Benjamin Gutman, Solicitor General, Salem, argued the cause and filed the briefs for appellant. Also on the briefs were Ellen F. Rosenblum, Attorney General, and Jennifer S. Lloyd, Assistant Attorney General.
Kevin Sali, Kevin Sali LLC, Portland, argued the cause and filed the brief for respondent. Also on the brief was John Robb.
Before Walters, Chief Justice, and Balmer, Flynn, Duncan, Nelson, Garrett, and DeHoog, Justices.**
This case involves the state's direct and interlocutory appeal of an omnibus pretrial order granting numerous defense motions to suppress evidence that the state obtained through wiretaps and search warrants. See ORS 138.045(1)(d) (); ORS 138.045(2) (). The trial court ruled: (1) that the wiretaps violated federal law because the applications did not indicate that the elected district attorney personally was even aware of the applications, and (2) that roughly two dozen search warrants for cell phone data and social media accounts were invalid for multiple reasons, including that the warrants were overbroad and that, after excising from later warrant applications all information derived from the invalid earlier warrant(s), the state lacked probable cause to support the later warrants. We affirm those rulings of the trial court.
Defendant has been charged with first-degree and second-degree murder, first-degree robbery, promoting prostitution, and other crimes. In this pretrial posture, the following facts are undisputed for purposes of this direct appeal.
The murder charges arise from the death of RBH, who was shot outside of his apartment building in the early morning hours of September 20, 2017. RBH had had an argument with his wife the evening before and had left their home to spend the night in his pickup truck. RBH's wife spoke to him about 3:00 a.m., while he was sitting in his truck in the parking lot outside of their building. Officers were called to the scene the next morning and found RBH on the ground near his truck, with a gunshot wound to the head. It appears that the shooting occurred at about 3:30 a.m., based on the report of a neighbor who heard sounds that might have been gunfire and saw a car driving away from where the body was found.
When officers arrived at the scene, they found two cell phones on RBH's body. Although his wife could identify only one cell phone as belonging to RBH, officers eventually determined that the second phone belonged to him as well. With consent from RBH's wife, police obtained a search warrant for the call and text records for the second phone. Through those records, officers identified a phone number, -2494, that had called RBH nine times between 3:13 a.m. and 3:21 a.m. on the morning of the murder. Four of the calls were not completed, another four had gone to voicemail, and the final call had been answered and had lasted over four minutes.
The affidavit requested a warrant to obtain detailed records for the period from 8:00 a.m. on September 19, 2017, through 8:00 p.m. on September 21, including "location data" for the phone, "details of all voice, message, and data usages (incoming and outgoing)," and "all incoming and/or outgoing SMS and/or MMS messages and related records." The warrant issued on September 22, 2017.
Around the time that officers received records in response to the September 22 warrant for phone number -2494, which the state later linked to defendant, officers learned from an analysis of RBH's phone records that he had exchanged numerous text messages and phone calls in the hour before his death with multiple phone numbers that police linked to online advertisements for prostitution services. One of these calls to RBH's phone was made at 3:27 a.m., from a phone number linked to prostitution advertisements for a woman named Sterling-Clark.
Relying in part on the additional information from RBH's phone and in part on records obtained in response to the September 22 warrant, officers then sought and obtained orders for the records of multiple additional phone numbers. And those records, in turn, led to still other search warrants. As relevant here, the state would eventually obtain more than twenty additional search warrants directed against defendant based on the information developed from the September 22 warrant. Those additional warrants were primarily for phone numbers, but also included warrants for online accounts, that were owned or used by defendant.
In addition, the state applied for and obtained orders to intercept oral, electronic, and wire communications (wiretaps) for multiple phone numbers allegedly used by defendant, a process that is restricted under federal law. See 18 USC §§ 2510 - 2520 ().
The state's theory of the case, which it expects the evidence will support, is that defendant and Sterling-Clark were part of a prostitution ring operating in Washington County. On the night that RBH was murdered, he had responded to an online ad for prostitution services and had arranged to meet Sterling-Clark. Defendant, who helped arrange the encounter, drove Sterling-Clark to meet RBH. At some point, defendant and Sterling-Clark decided to rob RBH, who had texted them a picture of a large amount of cash. In the course of the robbery, defendant shot and killed RBH. Later, defendant tried to intimidate Sterling-Clark into concealing his role in the murder.
After being indicted, defendant filed numerous pretrial motions, including motions to suppress evidence intercepted through the wiretaps and obtained through search warrants for cell phone records, beginning with the September 22 warrant. The trial court granted some of defendant's motions to suppress, and the state filed this pretrial appeal pursuant to ORS 138.045(1)(d), (2).
As described at the outset, the state divides its challenges to the pretrial rulings into two assignments of error. The first assignment of error challenges the grant of defendant's motion to suppress evidence obtained through the wiretap orders on the basis that the applications failed to satisfy the requirements of federal law. The second assignment of error challenges the court's combined ruling granting two dozen motions to suppress evidence derived from search warrants for cell phone records on the basis that each warrant was invalid for multiple alternative reasons. As the facts are undisputed, we review the trial court's rulings on the motions to suppress for legal error. See State v. Turnidge , 359 Or. 364, 399, 374 P.3d 853 (2016). And we conclude that the trial court did not err.
Defendant sought to suppress the evidence obtained as a result of the four wiretap orders. Federal law—enacted as Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (Wiretap Act), Pub L 90-351, 82 Stat 197 (1968) —restricts in several ways the ability of both state and federal government officials to obtain judicial wiretap orders. Most pertinent to this appeal, the act prohibits all courts, federal and state, from admitting any wiretap evidence obtained in violation of the act in any trial, hearing, or other similar proceeding. 18 USC § 2515 ; see also id. § 2518(10)(a) ().1
The relevant restriction on wiretaps is set out in 18 USC section 2516(2), which provides that wiretap applications at the state level must be made by "[t]he principal prosecuting attorney of any State, or the principal prosecuting attorney of any political subdivision thereof, if such attorney is authorized by a statute of that State[.]"
The affidavits provided no further information about the authorization.
In his motion to suppress, defendant argued that the "principal prosecuting attorney" under section 2516(2) is limited to the Attorney General or an elected district attorney and that the district attorney cannot delegate the authority to make wiretap applications. Defendant recognized that Oregon law purports to authorize district attorneys to delegate to a deputy their authority to apply for wiretaps. See ORS 133.724(1) (...
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