United States v. Matthew Beaudion ( 2020 )

Case: 19-30635 Document: 00515634245 Page: 1 Date Filed: 11/11/2020
United States Court of Appeals
for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
FILED
No. 19-30635 November 11, 2020
Lyle W. Cayce
Clerk
United States of America,
Plaintiff—Appellee,
versus
Matthew A. Beaudion,
Defendant—Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Louisiana
USDC No. 3:17-CR-319-1
Before Smith, Clement, and Oldham, Circuit Judges.
Andrew S. Oldham, Circuit Judge:
This is a case about GPS searches, Fourth Amendment standing, and
the Stored Communications Act. Matthew Beaudion and his girlfriend,
Jessica Davis, were drug dealers. Narcotics officers obtained a warrant for the
GPS coordinates of Davis’s cell phone and used the coordinates to intercept
the car in which she and Beaudion were traveling. After losing a motion to
suppress, Beaudion pleaded guilty to drug charges. He appealed. We affirm.
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I.
During a narcotics investigation by the Monroe Police Department
(“MPD”), multiple drug dealers and cooperating witnesses identified
Beaudion and Davis as their suppliers. One witness informed MPD Officer
Heckard that Beaudion and Davis were planning to drive from Houston to
Monroe with four pounds of meth. The witness then called Davis on her cell
phone, [XXX]-[XXX]-0889, to arrange a meth deal. Heckard listened in.
Heckard used that information and Davis’s cell phone number to
request a search warrant. In the warrant application, Heckard asked for the
GPS coordinates of Davis’s cell phone over the next sixteen hours. Louisiana
District Judge Larry Jefferson found probable cause to support the request
and issued the warrant. Heckard promptly faxed the warrant to Verizon’s
law-enforcement division. Verizon agreed to provide the longitude and
latitude coordinates of Davis’s phone as many times as Heckard called to
request them within the sixteen-hour window. Heckard called six times. Each
time he received a verbal recitation of the most recent GPS data and an
estimated margin of error. The coordinates confirmed that Davis (or at least
her phone) was headed east toward Monroe.
Heckard’s final call to Verizon indicated that Davis was passing
through Shreveport and on her way to Monroe. So Heckard and other MPD
officers spread out along the interstate and waited for Davis to arrive. The
officers stopped the car, searched it, and discovered the meth. Then they
arrested Davis and Beaudion and recovered Davis’s phone from her purse.
The United States charged Beaudion with conspiracy to possess with
the intent to distribute methamphetamine in violation of 21 U.S.C.
§§ 841(a)(1) and 846. Beaudion moved to suppress the drugs and other
evidence on the theory that the warrant authorizing the GPS tracking was
defective. A magistrate judge recommended denying the motion for lack of
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Fourth Amendment standing, and the district court adopted that
recommendation. The district court held in the alternative that Beaudion’s
warrant-related arguments did not entitle him to relief.
Beaudion entered a conditional guilty plea. The district court gave him
a Guidelines sentence. Beaudion timely appealed his conviction and sentence
by challenging the denial of his motion to suppress.
II.
Beaudion argues that Heckard violated the Fourth Amendment by
obtaining Davis’s GPS coordinates via a defective warrant. We therefore
begin with the original public meaning of the Amendment. See, e.g., Atwater
v. City of Lago Vista, 532 U.S. 318, 326, 338–39 (2001).
A.
The Fourth Amendment protects “[t]he right of the people to be
secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects[] against unreasonable
searches and seizures.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. English search-and-
seizure practices inform the original public meaning of this text. See, e.g.,
United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400, 404–05 (2012).
For a long time, searches and seizures in England were relatively
limited. Private parties who witnessed a felony could chase the perpetrator
during the “hue and cry,” but they rarely went house-to-house looking for
unidentified suspects. William J. Cuddihy, The Fourth
Amendment: Origins and Original Meaning 28–31 (2009).
Customs officials could search ships for counterfeit currency and smuggled
goods, but they rarely ventured onto land. Id. at 31–33. And guild officers
could inspect merchandise for quality-control purposes, but they rarely
investigated people outside their professions. Id. at 33–36. Given the limited
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frequency and scope of these searches, they generated “little protest.” Id. at
27.
Then the Tudors assumed the throne in 1485, and “the English law of
search and seizure underwent a radical transformation.” Id. at 44. The
targeted investigations of prior centuries became general searches of
sweeping scope. These searches were authorized by general warrants that
commanded their enforcers “to search the houses, out-houses, or other
places of any person . . . as upon good ground shall be suspected,” to quote
just one example. Richard Kilburne, Choice Presidents
Relating to the Office and Duty of a Justice of Peace 171–
72 (London, Assigns of Rich. & Edw. Atkins 1680). Thus, the hue and cry
morphed from targeted searches for identified felons into “private search[es]
. . . in every Town” of “all suspected houses and places.” Michael
Dalton, The Countrey Justice 83 (London, The Company of
Stationers 1655). Customs officials received authorization to search not only
ships but also any “shop, warehouse, or other place or places whatsoever
which they . . . shall think good within this realm.” 3 Tudor Royal
Proclamations 190 (Paul L. Hughes & James F. Larkin eds., 1969). And
the Crown expanded guild searches beyond guild members and their
competitors to civilians outside the regulated profession. Cuddihy, supra,
at 54. The Crown also used general warrants and searches to regulate
vagrancy, recreation, apparel, hunting, weapons, and social unrest. Id. at 44.
Some objected that such searches were unlawful and “unreasonable.”
Importantly, the objectors framed their arguments in terms of individual
rights. Sir Edward Coke, for example, argued that general searches violated
Magna Carta’s individualized promise that “[n]o free man shall be taken or
imprisoned or dispossessed, . . . nor will we go upon him, nor send upon him,
except by the legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.” Great
Charter of Liberties, ch. 39 (1215), reprinted in Select
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Documents of English Constitutional History 42, 47
(George Burton Adams & H. Morse Stephens eds., 1929); see Cuddihy,
supra, at 110. Another frustrated journalist complained, “these scumms of
Raskallity come[] with a warrant . . . to seize on our goods, & commit our
Persons to their stinking Dungeons.” Mercurius Pragmaticus No.
45, at 5–6 (Marchamont Nedham 1649).
Violations of personal rights necessitated personal remedies. Writing
in the 1640s, Sir Matthew Hale suggested that informants whose criminal
reports produced fruitless searches should be liable in tort to the person
searched. See 2 Matthew Hale, Historia Placitorum
Coronae 151 (London, E. & R. Nutt 1736); Cuddihy, supra, at 269–70
(explaining that Hale “wrote much of the Historia in the 1640s” before it was
published posthumously in 1736). Parliament agreed. See Fraud Act of 1660,
12 Car. 2, c. 19, § 4, in 7 The Statutes at Large 460–61 (Danby
Pickering ed., London, Joseph Bentham 1763) (“[I]f the information
whereupon any house shall come to be searched, shall prove to be false . . .
the party injured shall recover his full damages and costs against the
informer[] by action of trespass . . . .”). And tort liability soon expanded to
reach offending officers as well. Indeed, many of the canonical English
search-and-seizure cases—whose “propositions were in the minds of those
who framed the [F]ourth [A]mendment”—involved trespass suits against
officers who authorized and executed general warrants. Boyd v. United States,
116 U.S. 616, 626–27 (1886); see, e.g., Entick v. Carrington, 19 How. St. Tr.
1029, 1030 (C.P. 1765); Wilkes v. Wood, 19 How. St. Tr. 1153, 1153 (C.P.
1763).
Both the posture and pronouncements of those cases reflect the
common-law understanding that unreasonable searches and seizures were a
person-specific harm with a person-specific remedy. Not just anyone could
sue in trespass. Rather, the proper plaintiff was one who “ha[d] a
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property . . . in the soil[] and actual possession by entry.” 3 William
Blackstone, Commentaries *210. Thus the plaintiff in Entick could
seek relief because the defendants “broke and entered [his] dwelling-house”
and “disturbed him in the peaceable possession thereof.” 19 How. St. Tr. at
1030. And the plaintiff in Wilkes properly brought “an action of trespass[] for
entering [his] house, breaking his locks, and seizing his papers.” 19 How. St.
Tr. at 1153. Lord Camden’s famous remarks in Entick underscore this
connection between an individual’s property interests and his standing to
challenge a search or seizure:
The great end, for which men entered into society, was to
secure their property. . . . By the laws of England, every
invasion of private property, be it ever so minute, is a trespass.
No man can set his foot upon my ground without my licence,
but he is liable to an action . . . .
According to this reasoning, it is now incumbent upon the
defendants to shew the law, by which this seizure is warranted.
If that cannot be done, it is a trespass.
19 How. St. Tr. at 1066. Such cases did not contemplate a remedy for those
who objected to a trespass suffered by another.
B.
A similar approach to searches and seizures took hold in America.
Colonial Massachusetts—which “formulated most of the ideas that formed
the specific warrant clause of the Fourth Amendment,” Cuddihy, supra,
at 327—patterned its first major limitation on general warrants after
England’s sue-in-trespass regime. See Naval Office Law of 1682, Mass. Col.
St., in 5 Records of the Governor and Company of the
Massachusetts Bay in New England: 1674–1686, at 338
(Nathaniel Shurtleff ed., Boston, William White 1854) (“[I]f any person be
damnified by false information, wrongfull searching, or seizing any goods,
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ships, or other vessell, he may recover the same by an action of the
case . . . .”). And James Otis—whose arguments in the famous Writs of
Assistance Case prompted Massachusetts to constitutionalize a right against
unreasonable searches and seizures—complained of the same particularized
harms that animated Coke, Hale, and Camden in England. See 2 Charles
Francis Adams, The Works of John Adams 524 (Boston,
Charles C. Little & James Brown 1850) (memorializing Otis’s argument that
general writs of assistance “totally annihilate” the “freedom of one’s house”
because they permit officers to “enter our houses[] when they please” and
“break locks, bars, and every thing in their way”). Twenty-eight years later,
Otis’s objections made their way into the federal Constitution. See U.S.
Const. amend. IV.
All this history matters. It explains the Fourth Amendment’s
requirement for specific warrants. It demarcates unreasonable searches and
seizures. And it suggests the remedies for violations of Fourth Amendment
rights. Of course, the complexities of history sometimes leave room for
debate in answering these questions. But one thing is beyond debate: the
Fourth Amendment is not a weapon that uninjured parties get to wield on
behalf of others. As with the common law that preceded it, the Fourth
Amendment protects individuals’ security “in their persons,” “their . . .
houses,” “their . . . papers,” and “their . . . effects.” Ibid. (emphasis added).
It does not protect individuals’ security in the property of someone else.
III.
Modern doctrine incorporates this history in the requirement of
Fourth Amendment “standing.” This “standing” concept ensures that
those invoking the Amendment can vindicate only their personal security
against unreasonable searches and seizures. And it requires us to reject
Beaudion’s claim.
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A.
According to the Supreme Court, the Fourth Amendment sometimes
carries a “judicially created remedy” that allows a defendant to suppress
evidence obtained through an unreasonable search or seizure. United States
v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 906 (1984) (quotation omitted); see Mapp v. Ohio, 367
U.S. 643 (1961); Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383 (1914). But the so-called
exclusionary rule does not operate vicariously. Rather, a criminal defendant
seeking suppression must show that “his own Fourth Amendment rights
[were] infringed by the search [or] seizure which he seeks to challenge.” Byrd
v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 1518, 1526 (2018) (emphasis added) (quotation
omitted).
Today we call this principle “Fourth Amendment standing.” Id. at
1530. Unlike the Article III standing that enables federal courts to exercise
the judicial power, Fourth Amendment standing “is not a jurisdictional
question.” Ibid. It is instead “more properly subsumed under substantive
Fourth Amendment doctrine,” Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 139 (1978), an
outgrowth of the historical focus on people’s security in “their” persons,
houses, papers, and effects, see Minnesota v. Carter, 525 U.S. 83, 92 (1998)
(Scalia, J., concurring) (“The obvious meaning of the provision is that each
person has the right to be secure . . . in his own person, house, papers, and
effects.”). Therefore, a defendant seeking to suppress evidence must show
not only that the police committed an unreasonable search or seizure, but also
that the search or seizure “infringed [a Fourth Amendment] interest of the
defendant” himself. Rakas, 439 U.S. at 140.
A defendant can establish this personalized interest in one of two
ways. First, he may object to the “physical intrusion of a constitutionally
protected area” in which he has a property interest. United States v. Jones,
565 U.S. 400, 407 (2012) (quotation omitted). And second, he may object to
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government action that violates a “reasonable expectation of privacy . . . in
the place searched.” Byrd, 138 S. Ct. at 1527. Either way, the Fourth
Amendment standing inquiry is both defendant- and place-specific: it
requires that a particular defendant (the suppression movant) have a property
or privacy interest in a particular place (the area searched). See United States
v. Hernandez, 647 F.3d 216, 219 (5th Cir. 2011) (holding defendant lacked
standing to challenge search because he “ha[d] not demonstrated that he had
‘a legitimate expectation of privacy in the invaded place’” (quoting Rakas,
439 U.S. at 143)).
B.
Here, the parties agree that the Government conducted a search when
it used the GPS coordinates from Verizon to locate Davis’s phone. But the
district court held that Beaudion lacked standing to challenge that search and
denied his suppression motion accordingly. We review the district court’s
standing determination de novo and its factual findings for clear error. United
States v. Iraheta, 764 F.3d 455, 460 (5th Cir. 2014). “[W]e review the
evidence in the light most favorable to the government as the prevailing
party.” United States v. Rounds, 749 F.3d 326, 338 (5th Cir. 2014). And we
must “uphold the district court’s ruling to deny the suppression motion if
there is any reasonable view of the evidence to support it.” United States v.
Massi, 761 F.3d 512, 529 (5th Cir. 2014) (quotation omitted).
1.
To determine whether Beaudion has standing, we first identify the
place that was searched. The warrant authorized Officer Heckard to search
GPS coordinates and registered owner information of cell
phone number [XXX]-[XXX]-0889. This is to include its
location from current date and time of August 15, 2017 at 0813
hours to August 16, 2017 at 0000 hours. Cell phone number
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[XXX]-[XXX]-0889 is activated through Verizon Wireless and
is currently being used by Jessica Nicole Davis.
Thus, the Government sought and Judge Jefferson granted sixteen hours of
access to the GPS coordinates of Davis’s phone. Nothing in the record or the
parties’ briefs suggests that MPD officers ever exceeded the scope of that
warrant. Officer Heckard adhered to its terms by faxing the warrant to
Verizon and periodically requesting the location of Davis’s phone during the
approved window. His requests didn’t mention Beaudion or Beaudion’s
phone. In fact, Heckard testified that he did not learn that Beaudion even had
a phone until after Beaudion’s arrest. We therefore conclude that the GPS
coordinates of Davis’s phone constitute the relevant “place searched.” Byrd,
138 S. Ct. at 1527.
Beaudion would have us go further. In his view, the Government’s
search extended beyond Davis and her phone to include Beaudion and the
car in which he and Davis were traveling. That’s so, he argues, because
“[t]he purpose of the search warrant was to track the movements of [t]he car
by using the GPS location of the cell phone inside of the car.” That argument
fails for at least two reasons.
First, the Supreme Court long ago rejected the “target” theory of a
search under which “any criminal defendant at whom a search was ‘directed’
would have standing to contest the legality of that search.” Rakas, 439 U.S.
at 132–33. Framing the standing inquiry that way “would in effect permit a
defendant to assert that a violation of the Fourth Amendment rights of a third
party entitled him to have evidence suppressed at his trial.” Id. at 133. What
matters is not the purpose of a search but rather its scope.
Second, the Supreme Court has consistently defined the relevant
scope of a search with granularity. In United States v. Rakas, for example, two
defendants moved to suppress evidence discovered during the search of a
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vehicle in which they were passengers. Id. at 129–30. The Court confined its
analysis to the specific “portions of the automobile which were searched,”
holding that the defendants lacked an expectation of privacy “in the glove
compartment [and the] area under the seat” where police found contraband.
Id. at 148–49. Similarly, in Collins v. Virginia, the Court reviewed
“photographs in the record” to determine “whether the part of the driveway
where [the defendant’s] motorcycle was parked and subsequently searched”
qualified as constitutionally protected “curtilage.” 138 S. Ct. 1663, 1670
(2018). Defining the scope of a search with such specificity makes sense: the
Fourth Amendment itself authorizes warrants only when “the scope of
the . . . search is set out with particularity.” Kentucky v. King, 563 U.S. 452,
459 (2011); see supra Part II. Applying that particularized analysis here, the
scope of the search—as reflected in both the warrant and Heckard’s
compliance with it—included only the GPS coordinates of Davis’s phone
and her corresponding location.
2.
Having concluded that the “place searched” is limited to location
information about Davis, we now ask whether Beaudion has a Fourth
Amendment property or privacy interest in that information. He doesn’t.
The Supreme Court requires us to consider “whether the person
claiming the constitutional violation ha[s] a legitimate expectation of privacy
in the premises searched.” Byrd, 138 S. Ct. at 1526 (quotation omitted).
“[P]roperty concepts are instructive” in making that determination. Ibid.
(quotation omitted). Indeed, the privacy inquiry “supplements . . . ‘the
traditional property-based understanding of the Fourth Amendment.’” Ibid.
(quoting Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1, 11 (2013)). Privacy and property
concepts “are often linked” because “one who owns or lawfully possesses or
controls property will in all likelihood have a legitimate expectation of privacy
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by virtue of the right to exclude.” Id. at 1527 (quotation omitted). That’s why
we must remain “[e]ver mindful of the Fourth Amendment and its
[property-based] history.” Id. at 1526.
These principles certainly gave Davis a reasonable expectation of
privacy in her phone and its location. She lawfully possessed and controlled
the phone as its “primary user.” And she owned the phone number for nearly
a decade. But Davis’s suppression motion is not before us. Rather, Beaudion
must show a reasonable expectation of privacy in a phone and number he did
not own.
Beaudion directs us to five facts as evidence of his reasonable privacy
expectations in Davis’s phone: (1) he purchased the physical phone and gave
it to Davis; (2) he had permission to use the phone; (3) he had password
access to the phone; (4) he accessed his Facebook account from the phone;
and (5) he used the phone to capture intimate videos of him and Davis. Fact
(1) is irrelevant. “[A] person has no standing to challenge a search or seizure
of property that was voluntarily abandoned” or conveyed to another. United
States v. Powell, 732 F.3d 361, 374 (5th Cir. 2013). And the Government
correctly observes that fact (3) is not supported by the record. Davis testified
only that Beaudion “ha[d] to put in [his] screen name and . . . password”
when logging onto Facebook, not when accessing the phone more generally.
Facts (2), (4), and (5) reduce to a claim that Beaudion sometimes used
Davis’s phone for personal activities. There is no indication that Beaudion
ever used or possessed the phone outside of Davis’s presence. And the
record doesn’t tell us how often he accessed Facebook or captured intimate
videos. What the record does tell us is that Davis was the “primary user”;
Davis had the phone number long before she met Beaudion; Davis
maintained possession of the phone throughout the day of the arrest; and
Davis’s parents paid the bill. No matter whether Beaudion actually expected
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privacy in the phone, we cannot say his expectation of privacy would be
reasonable. Cf. United States v. Finley, 477 F.3d 250, 254, 258–59 (5th Cir.
2007) (upholding district court’s finding that employee reasonably expected
privacy in a business phone that he continuously possessed and from which
he excluded others), abrogated on other grounds by Riley v. California, 573 U.S.
373 (2014).
3.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct.
2206 (2018), does not change the result. There, the Court considered a
defendant’s expectation of privacy in cell-site location information, or CSLI.
CSLI is a time-stamped location record that phones generate as they connect
to nearby cell sites. Carpenter, 138 S. Ct. at 2211–12. Because CSLI reveals a
cell phone’s historical location and because a “cell phone faithfully follows
its owner,” the Court held that “an individual maintains a legitimate
expectation of privacy in the record of his physical movements as captured
through CSLI.” Id. at 2217–18.
The pronoun in that holding is important. Carpenter did not address
the question whether an individual maintains a legitimate expectation of
privacy in a record that reveals someone else’s location. Here, the GPS
coordinates told MPD officers nothing about Beaudion specifically. It was
only because Officer Heckard spoke with a confidential informant and
overheard her conversation with Davis that he suspected Beaudion would be
nearby. Obviously, Heckard’s interactions with the informant were not a
search. See United States v. Brathwaite, 458 F.3d 376, 380 (5th Cir. 2006)
(“[A]udio surveillance by or with the consent of a government informant
does not constitute a search.” (citing United States v. White, 401 U.S. 745
(1971))). And nothing in Carpenter requires us to hold that Heckard’s non-
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search became a search simply because Beaudion decided to ride with Davis.
Beaudion’s claim to Fourth Amendment standing therefore fails.
IV.
Even if Beaudion has standing to challenge the GPS search, he must
also show the search was unreasonable. U.S. Const. amend. IV; see also
Grady v. North Carolina, 575 U.S. 306, 310 (2015) (per curiam) (“The Fourth
Amendment prohibits only unreasonable searches.”). He has not done so. 1
The Fourth Amendment “does not specify” what amounts to an
unreasonable search. King, 563 U.S. at 459. The Supreme Court has said its
“ultimate touchstone” is simply “reasonableness.” Ibid. (quotation
omitted). But the Court has also said that “reasonableness” requires a
“warrant supported by probable cause” or else a “specific exception to the
warrant requirement.” Carpenter, 138 S. Ct. at 2221 (quotation omitted). 2
That framework applies to CSLI, see ibid., and we apply it to the GPS data
collected here.
It is beyond dispute that Officer Heckard began tracking the GPS
coordinates only after receiving a warrant. And Beaudion concedes that the
warrant was “supported [by] probable cause with regard to [his] . . . illegal
drug[] activities.” Those two facts make this an easy case. See United States
1
Because the Fourth Amendment standing analysis is itself a merits inquiry, our
holding that Beaudion lacks standing of that sort does not prevent us from “addressing
other aspects of the merits of a Fourth Amendment claim.” Byrd, 138 S. Ct. at 1530.
2
It is not obvious whether the “reasonableness as warrant” or instead the
“reasonableness as reasonableness” cases better align with the Fourth Amendment’s
original public meaning. Compare Cuddihy, supra, at 263–406 (describing the “evolution
of the specific warrant as the orthodox method of search and seizure”), with William J.
Stuntz, The Substantive Origins of Criminal Procedure, 105 Yale L.J. 393, 409 n.62 (1995)
(rejecting the idea that “a broad modern-style warrant requirement [was] part of the
Founders’ picture of search and seizure law”).
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v. Beverly, 943 F.3d 225, 234–35 (5th Cir. 2019) (denying motion to suppress
CSLI obtained pursuant to a “warrant . . . supported by probable cause”).
Beaudion nevertheless claims for the first time on appeal that the GPS
search was unreasonable because the authorizing warrant failed to comply
with the Stored Communications Act (“SCA”). Circuit precedent requires
us to review that argument for plain error. See United States v. Vasquez, 899
F.3d 363, 372–73 (5th Cir. 2018). We find none.
The SCA creates various mechanisms by which a “governmental
entity may require a provider of electronic communication service . . . to
disclose a record or other information pertaining to a subscriber to or
customer of such service.” 18 U.S.C. § 2703(c)(1). One such mechanism
allows the Government to “obtain[] a warrant” from a state “court of
competent jurisdiction” using “[s]tate warrant procedures.” Id.
§ 2703(c)(1)(A). That is exactly what happened here. The Louisiana district
court that issued the warrant is unquestionably a court of competent
jurisdiction within the meaning of the SCA. See id. § 2711(3)(B) (defining
“court of competent jurisdiction” to include “a court of general criminal
jurisdiction of a State authorized by the law of that State to issue search
warrants”); La. Const. art. V, § 16 (“[A] district court shall have original
jurisdiction of all civil and criminal matters.”); La. Code Crim. Proc.
art. 161 (authorizing state judges to issue search warrants). And there is no
indication that Officer Heckard or Judge Jefferson violated state warrant
procedures. 3 So the warrant clearly complies with the plain text of the SCA.
3
Beaudion argued before the district court that the warrant was procedurally
defective because it lacked particularity and exceeded the state court’s jurisdiction. But he
fails to brief either point on appeal. So we need not address them. See United States v.
Delgado, 672 F.3d 320, 329 n.8 (5th Cir. 2012) (en banc).
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Beaudion disagrees. He contends that the SCA requires the
Government to produce probable cause that the subscriber or customer
committed a crime. And because Davis’s parents were the relevant Verizon
subscribers, Beaudion insists that the SCA invalidates a warrant premised on
illegal activities not involving Davis’s parents.
The argument borders on frivolous. Nowhere does § 2703 require a
showing of probable cause relating to the subscriber. Subsection (c) merely
requires that warrants comply with, as relevant here, “[s]tate warrant
procedures.” 18 U.S.C. § 2703(c)(1)(A). And subsection (d) authorizes
disclosure of otherwise-protected information upon a “showing that there
are reasonable grounds to believe that the . . . information sought [is] relevant
and material to an ongoing criminal investigation.” Id. § 2703(d) (emphasis
added). The warrant issued by Judge Jefferson complied with these
provisions.
Beaudion’s SCA argument faces another problem: “[S]uppression is
not a remedy for a violation of the Stored Communications Act.” United
States v. Guerrero, 768 F.3d 351, 358 (5th Cir. 2014). Congress could not have
been clearer on this point. See 18 U.S.C. § 2708 (“The remedies and
sanctions described in this chapter are the only judicial remedies and
sanctions for nonconstitutional violations of this chapter.”); id. §§ 2701,
2707, 2710, 2712 (authorizing certain civil, criminal, and administrative
remedies, but not suppression). For Beaudion to suppress the GPS data, “he
therefore must show that the . . . data was obtained not just in violation of the
[SCA], but also in violation of the Fourth Amendment.” Guerrero, 768 F.3d
at 358. And as explained above, his Fourth Amendment claims fall far short.
V.
Beaudion also argues that the district court should have granted his
motion to suppress because the officers who intercepted him committed an
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Case: 19-30635 Document: 00515634245 Page: 17 Date Filed: 11/11/2020
No. 19-30635
unconstitutional traffic stop. According to Beaudion, we must find a Fourth
Amendment violation because “there is not a shred of evidence in the record
of the reason the patrol officer [stopped] the car.” In fact, he observes,
“[t]here is not a shred of evidence about the stop” at all. Beaudion’s
argument is his own undoing. “The party seeking suppression has the burden
of proving, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the evidence in question
was obtained in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights.” United States v.
Wallace, 885 F.3d 806, 809 (5th Cir. 2018) (quotation omitted). Beaudion
never challenged the constitutionality of the traffic stop in the district court.
And he offers no argument that we should overlook his forfeiture under plain-
error review.
AFFIRMED.
17