Sixth Circuit: Continuous Drug Dealing Operations Alone Justified Warrant to Search Residence
This case law update was written by Michael J. Sgarlat, an attorney at the law firm of Shaw Bransford & Roth, where he has practiced federal personnel and employment law since 2015. Mr. Sgarlat works with federal employees to respond to proposed disciplinary and adverse actions, and has experience litigating cases before the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board.
In 2007, the Louisville office of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) conducted an investigation which led to the seizure of drugs and money and the convictions of Byron Mayes and brothers Julio and Alfredo Rivas-Lopez. Flash forward to 2016, and all three drug dealers were out of prison.
During surveillance of a suspected stash house in Louisville, officers believed the house “operator” was receiving drugs from the Rivas-Lopez brothers and selling them to Mayes. The officers executed a search warrant at the stash house and seized drugs and money. Also, the phone of the house’s operator had texts from none other than Julio Rivas-Lopez.
In 2017, the DEA learned Julio Rivas-Lopez was murdered and that Alfredo took over the family business. An undercover agent also learned that Alfredo planned to send drugs to his Louisville distributor. Using phone records, the officers identified the phone number of the Louisville distributor, and a state judge issued a warrant to obtain location data from AT&T for the distributor’s phone. It belonged to Dwayne Sheckles.
Officers pinged Sheckles’s phone numerous times, and located it at the Crescent Centre Apartments and Terrace Creek Apartments. An employee of the Crescent Centre Apartments also complained of drug dealing from Apartment 234. The officers sought search warrants for both apartments. While they were obtaining the warrants, other officers saw Sheckles leave the Crescent Centre Apartments, stopped his vehicle, smelled marijuana, and detained Sheckles.
A state judge approved the warrants, and at the Crescent Centre Apartments, officers seized heroin, methamphetamine, and weapons. At the Terrace Creek Apartments, they entered with guns drawn and directed at Sheckles’s pregnant girlfriend, Cristal Flores. While there, they found paperwork for a storage unit, and she signed a form consenting to a search of the storage unit. A search of the unit revealed a large sum of money.
Sheckles was indicted for several counts. He moved to suppress the evidence against him. The district court rejected his arguments. Sheckles appealed after entering a conditional plea agreement. On appeal, Sheckles argued that the officers lacked probable cause for all three warrants.
Sheckles first challenged the warrant to obtain his phone’s location data. Here, the officers sought to locate a phone to identify the person using it and investigate the person’s crimes, not to seize anything. The court was puzzled in addressing “[w]hat type of ‘nexus between … cellphone location data and drug trafficking’ justifies this different kind of warrant?” But the court did not resolve that issue here. It found that no matter of the nature of the required nexus between the phone’s location data and criminal activity, the information provided in the affidavit in question provided a substantial basis for the state judge’s finding probable cause to obtain the phone’s location information.
Sheckles next challenged the search warrants for the two apartments. A virtually identical affidavit was used for both warrants, and the affidavits supported three propositions: Sheckles was a drug dealer, he lived at the Terrace Creek apartment, and sold drugs from the Crescent Centre apartment. The affidavits sought search warrants to seize drugs, paraphernalia, proceeds, and records. The court turned to whether the affidavits’ information provided a sufficient nexus between these items and the apartments. The court found that there was a substantial basis for both warrants.
The court found the Terrace Creek apartment to be a “closer call.” With respect to the affidavit to search the Terrace Creek apartment, the court said that the affidavit showed that Sheckles was a drug dealer who lived there, and cases pointed in both directions whether that, in itself, was enough. But the court said these cases are fact-specific and did not find a conflict. It noted a trend that when a drug dealer’s drug activities alone found probable cause to search the dealer’s home, the dealer was engaged in “continual and ongoing operations.” Here, Sheckles was connected to a “large, ongoing drug trafficking operation” led by the Rivas-Lopez brothers.
Sheckles also challenged the search of the storage unit. Sheckles argued that Flores’s consent was involuntary and that she lacked authority over the storage unit. The magistrate judge, whose findings the district court adopted, resolved this issue. The judge noted that while the police entered the apartment with guns drawn, that display of force took place long before Flores signed the consent forms. The court turned to whether Flores had authority to consent. It explained that the constitutional power to consent exists if the party has “actual” or “apparent” authority over the property. For there to be “actual” authority, there must be a “mutual use of the property by persons generally having joint access or control for most purposes.” The court explained that officers only need one or the other. Here, the court determined that Flores had actual authority, as the unit’s records showed that Sheckles identified Flores as having access to the unit under his rental agreement.
In addition to these findings, the court rejected Sheckles’s arguments that his rights were violated when he was stopped in his vehicle. The court affirmed the decision of the district court.
Read the full case: United States v. Sheckles
For over thirty years, Shaw Bransford & Roth P.C. has provided superior representation on a wide range of federal employment law issues, from representing federal employees nationwide in administrative investigations, disciplinary and performance actions, and Bivens lawsuits, to handling security clearance adjudications and employment discrimination cases.