D.Conn.: CSLI not good enough to place def at particular location for entry to arrest

Using cell site location data to locate the defendant, the fact the phone put him at a particular address wasn’t sufficient to show that he was actually inside or that it was his residence under Steagald. The government had no information linking him to that address to make it his residence, and the entry was illegal, particularly of a second floor apartment. For all the government’s information showed, he was in a car parked outside of that address. Also, one who borrows a car has a reasonable expectation of privacy in it while he has it, but loses it when he turns it back. United States v. Bohannon, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 172722 (D. Conn. December 15, 2014):

This first flaw might not have been problematic if the government had established a more convincing connection between Dickson, her Camry, or her apartment and Bohannon. The officers had only actually seen him walking to the door of 34 Morgan once, and the testimony describing that sighting did not specify whether Bohannon was seen going into the first or second floor apartment. Moreover, that observation was made more than a month before Bohannon’s arrest. While Bohannon may have mentioned Morgan Avenue in his text messages on several occasions, he never specifically referred to 34 Morgan Avenue itself, its second floor apartment, or Dickson. SA Zuk described Dickson as Bohannon’s girlfriend — a title Dickson denied — but he gave no basis for that description. Despite the fact that that description may have been true, the government provided no basis to believe that fact with evidence it obtained prior to entering 34 Morgan. Finally, the government saw Dickson’s Camry on one occasion at 103 Crestview at the end of November, but they never saw Bohannon driving or in the car. Nor had they even seen Bohannon driving a car rented in Dickson’s name. While Bohannon was once pulled over in a rental car not in his name, there was no evidence in this record that it was Dickson’s rental car.

There are other problems with the government’s basis to enter as well. Notably, the cellular data upon which SA Zuk relied was of questionable accuracy, at least at times. For example, SA Zuk testified that the GPS data from the first of Bohannon’s cell phone, which provided more accurate location information than the second phone, sometimes placed the phone up to 1,500 meters away from its actual location. That is not to say that the information was never accurate or that it is unhelpful to the officers, but it certainly was not entirely reliable. Further, the phone that Bohannon was using in December did not even have that capacity, making it less reliable of an indicator of his location.

The government entered the second floor apartment at 34 Morgan because SA Zuk believed that Bohannon was likely in the general area and that he was connected to Dickson, the owner of that apartment. The government’s evidence of any connection between Bohannon and Dickson or her apartment is minimal, and it did not give rise to a reasonable belief that Bohannon was present in 34 Morgan at 5:30 a.m. on December 5, 2013. Therefore, the government’s entry into Dickson’s apartment was an illegal entry.