United States v. Taylor
| Decision Date | 05 December 2022 |
| Docket Number | 20-7593 |
| Citation | 54 F.4th 795 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. Gloria Patricia TAYLOR, Defendant - Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
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.
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.
Appellant Gloria Patricia Taylor ("Appellant") appeals the district court's order denying relief on her 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion to vacate, set aside, or correct her sentence. Appellant claimed that her trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to move to suppress information obtained from a search warrant that relied, in part, on the Government's warrantless procurement of certain data from her cell phone service provider. Because the Government relied in good faith on court orders issued in accordance with the Federal Stored Communications Act ("SCA"), 18 U.S.C. § 2703 et seq. , did not request the data in its subpoenas, and the use of a subpoena to obtain the data was lawful at the time, we hold the district court's admission of the challenged evidence must be sustained. Thus, any motion to suppress filed before Appellant's trial would not have been meritorious. Therefore, we affirm.
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.
On July 1, 2013, at approximately 7:00am, DEA agents seized three crates containing approximately 1,387 pounds of marijuana from R&L Carriers, a delivery company located in Baltimore, Maryland. Two of the crates were addressed to Royal Gem & Mineral ("Royal Gem") in Landover, Maryland, and the third crate was addressed to Artistique Connection ("Artistique") in Brentwood.
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 21 U.S.C. § 8761 and the SCA on the telecommunications company Sprint Corporation ("Sprint").2 The SCA prohibits companies that provide electronic communication services from disclosing the contents of the information stored on their systems, except under certain circumstances where the government may compel a provider to disclose such content. See 18 U.S.C. § 2703(a) – (d). Relevant here, the DEA issued three subpoenas covering the following periods:
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 January 2014 were associated with a repoll number of "449," which corresponds to a phone switch for the Phoenix metropolitan area.
On March 12, 2014, a federal magistrate judge in Maryland issued an administrative order pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 2703(d) requiring the production of historical cellular site 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 Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 414 and 18 U.S.C. § 2703(c)(1)(A),5 which was extended several times. Investigators used the GPS data to determine that Appellant travelled to Tucson on July 15, 2014 and returned to Maryland on July 23, 2014. GPS data also put Appellant in Tucson again from September 20–23, 2014.
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, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (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.
On March 14, 2016, a federal grand jury charged Appellant with one count of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute 1,000 kilograms or more of marijuana, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846, two counts of using a communications device to facilitate narcotics trafficking in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 843(b), and one count of possession with intent to distribute 100 kilograms or more of marijuana, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841.
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).
On January 7, 2019, Appellant filed a motion to vacate, set aside, or correct her sentence pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255, claiming that her trial counsel had rendered ineffective assistance by not moving to suppress information resulting from the Search Warrant. Relevant here, Appellant alleged that the Search Warrant application referenced cell phone data, including historical CSLI and GPS tracking data, that was collected in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Specifically, Appellant argued that DEA agents had (1) collected CSLI pursuant to § 2703(d), in violation of the Fourth Amendment; (2) collected GPS real-time tracking data pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41 and § 2703(c)(1)(A), rather than pursuant to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act ("ECPA"), 18 U.S.C § 3117 ;7 and (3) used the GPS real-time tracking data in support of the Search Warrant...
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