Criminal Practice – Stored Communications Act – Exigent Circumstances Exception

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Evidence obtained from the use of real-time, cell-site location should not have been suppressed.

We affirmed the convictions for burglary, armed robbery, kidnapping, and illegal possession of a weapon.

Rashawn Vertez Carter contended law enforcement officers violated his federal and state constitutional rights by not getting a search warrant before obtaining his real-time, cell-site location information from his cell-service provider for the purpose of tracking him down after he became a suspect in a violent home invasion.

We found no fault in the trial court’s choice to resolve Carter’s suppression motion on the search question, nor in the court of appeals’ choice to decide the appeal primarily by applying the exigent circumstances exception to the warrant requirement. While both courts appear to have engaged in sound analysis, we did not need to decide whether they made the correct ruling. Instead, we took a different approach because provisions of the federal Stored Communications Act make it irrefutably clear that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies, such that even if an unconstitutional search occurred, we would not sanction the “harsh medicine” of excluding the evidence obtained through that search. Officers clearly acted in good faith reliance on a federal statute that specifically permitted their actions. Therefore, under the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule, there was no error in refusing to suppress evidence obtained through the use of Carter’s real-time, cell-site location information.

Subsection 2702(c)(4) of the federal Stored Communications Act specifically allows cell-service providers to release customer records like those T-Mobile released here “if the provider, in good faith, believes that an emergency involving danger of death or serious physical injury to any person requires disclosure without delay of information relating to the emergency.” As contemplated by subsection 2702(c)(4), officers investigating Carter’s crimes explained the reasons they were requesting the information, and T-Mobile chose to provide Carter’s location information. The “Exigent Circumstance Request Form” officers used to obtain Carter’s location information specifically stated the request was made pursuant to section 2702 of the Stored Communications Act. The officers acted with “an objectively reasonable good-faith belief that their conduct [was] lawful” by relying on a valid federal statute.

We join numerous other courts in holding the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule forecloses suppression when officers acted pursuant to this explicit federal statutory authority in obtaining real-time, cell-site location information. Thus, evidence obtained from the use of Carter’s real-time, cell-site location should not have been suppressed.

Affirmed.

The State v. Rashawn Vertez Carter (Lawyers’ Weekly No. 010-076-25, 6 pp.) (John C. Few, J.) Appealed from Aiken County Circuit Court (Doyet A. Early, III, J.) Appellate Defender David Alexander, of Columbia, for Petitioner; Attorney General Alan McCrory Wilson, Assistant Attorney General Joshua Abraham Edwards, both of Columbia; and Solicitor John William Weeks, of Aiken, all for Respondent. South Carolina Supreme Court