In 2018, a joint investigation by the FBI, ATF, and D.C. Metropolitan Police targeted Omar Elbakkoush for drug and firearms trafficking, eventually leading them to Linwood Thorne. Thorne was suspected of living in Washington, D.C., and operating an auto body shop in Maryland. After executing search warrants at his D.C. residence and Maryland shop, officers found significant quantities of drugs and unregistered firearms. To locate Thorne for arrest, agents tracked his cell phones using GPS-ping and cell-site-simulator warrants issued by a D.C. magistrate judge. The tracking revealed Thorne was in Baltimore, Maryland, where he was arrested. Thorne moved to suppress the evidence obtained from the cell-site-simulator warrant, arguing the D.C. magistrate lacked jurisdiction under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(b) because the phone was not located within the District at the time of issuance. The district court denied the motion, ruling that even if the warrant was invalid, the officers acted in good faith. Thorne was convicted on multiple counts of drug trafficking and firearms offenses and sentenced to 360 months in prison.
The court affirmed the conviction based on the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule established in United States v. Leon. The court reasoned that the Fourth Amendment's exclusionary rule is designed to deter police misconduct, not to punish errors made by judges or magistrates. Here, the investigating officers submitted a warrant application that addressed the venue issue and provided facts supporting a belief that the phone was in the District. The error, if any, lay with the magistrate judge's determination of jurisdiction, not with the officers' conduct. The officers did not act with deliberate, reckless, or grossly negligent disregard for Fourth Amendment rights. The court noted that eleven other circuits have extended the good-faith exception to Rule 41(b) jurisdictional violations and found this to be the correct approach. Consequently, the court held that suppression was unwarranted because the officers reasonably relied on the warrant. The court explicitly declined to decide whether the magistrate judge erred in applying the 'reason to believe' standard versus a 'probable cause' standard for venue under Rule 41(b), noting that the district court's reasoning on that point was flawed but unnecessary to the outcome.
This decision confirms that law enforcement officers in the D.C. Circuit can rely on cell-site-simulator warrants issued by magistrates even if there is a dispute over whether the magistrate had proper jurisdiction under Rule 41(b), provided the officers acted in good faith. The ruling leaves open the question of the correct evidentiary standard for establishing venue under Rule 41(b), which the court noted requires further resolution. The case is remanded to the district court to enforce the original sentence, as the convictions stand.