United States v. Thompson.

• Author: Du, Senrui

866 F.3D 1149 (10TH CIR. 2017)

In United States v. Thompson, (298) the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed the District Court's decision to grant the government's application for orders requesting Thompson's historical cell-service location information (CSLI) and admitting some of that CSLI evidence at a pretrial proceeding. (299) The Court held that cell phone users lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in their historical CSLI, which users voluntarily conveyed to third-party cell-service providers. (300)

1. BACKGROUND

   Thompson was arrested after an investigation into a drug-trafficking operation. (301) Agents gathered evidence through a confidential informant; monitoring telephones used by certain of the co-conspirators; and conducting searches of Thompson's residence. (302) Before trial in the district court, Judge Platt, a state court judge sitting in the Eighth Judicial District of Kansas, had issued wiretap orders for target phones used by Thompson and his co-conspirators. (303) Based in part on information derived from intercepts conducted pursuant to the wiretap orders, law enforcement applied for search warrants of Thompson's residence. (304) Officers seized cell phones, cash, miscellaneous documents, drug paraphernalia, and credit cards at Thompson's residence. (305)

   Thompson filed a motion to suppress the intercepted calls, "arguing law enforcement had intercepted his communications outside the territorial jurisdiction of the Eighth Judicial District." (306) The government filed an application for orders pursuant to [section] 2703(d) of the Stored Communications Act (SCA), asking the court to require the electronic service providers for Thompson and his co-conspirators to disclose historical CSLI for their phones. (307) The District Court granted the government's application. (308) "After obtaining the CSLI, the government sought to establish the location of the intercepted phone calls by showing that a call had 'pinged' certain cell towers in and around the Junction City area within the Eighth Judicial District." (309) "At a pretrial evidentiary hearing, the government presented the CSLI and testimony from two experts who agreed that if the CSLI showed a phone connected to one of the Junction City towers, then it was highly likely the phone was physically located in the Eighth Judicial District." (310) The District Court found the government's evidence sufficient. (311) The court, therefore...