Third Circuit Declines to Extend Carpenter v. United States to Prison Calls

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.

Edward Stinson and Juan Jarmon each ran drug trafficking rings from a building in Philadelphia, PA between 2010 and 2015. A large quantity of drugs coming out of the building spurred an investigation involving the local police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Agents used pole cameras, wiretaps, confidential informants, pen registers, and pulled trash. In the investigation, the agents uncovered that Stinson and Jarmon were both involved in selling the drugs. After Stinson was incarcerated, agents also listened to recordings of his phone conversations in prison.

In their trials, the agents discussed recorded phone calls they received as a part of the investigation. In one recorded call Stinson made in prison, he ceded some of his drug territory to Jarmon. Stinson moved to suppress recordings of phone calls he made while incarcerated, and because one of the calls was with Jarmon, he joined the motion. Stinson and Jarmon were convicted and sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment for their drug offenses. Stinson and Jarmon separately filed notices of appeal.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit consolidated the appeals as they raised on common issue – whether recordings of phone calls made from prison were admissible at trial. The court found that the motion to suppress was properly denied, and the recordings were admissible.

The court explained that the Fourth Amendment protects information in which one has a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” Until 2018, in Carpenter v. United States, one could not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily turned over to third parties. With Carpenter, the Supreme Court altered the “third-party doctrine” when it found a defendant’s cell-site location information is protected by the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court found cell-site location information to be different, because unlike ordinary business records, the collection of this information by phone carriers is “inescapable and automatic” once someone gets a cell phone.

Stinson and Jarmon asked that Carpenter be applied to prison cells. The court declined their invitation to expand Carpenter. In 2012, the Third Circuit held in Shavers v. United States, that inmates have no reasonable expectation of privacy in phone conversations if they have reason to know their calls are monitored. The court did not apply the third-party doctrine in that case, it relied on the unique nature of being incarcerated to find no expectation of privacy in prison calls. Therefore, the Shavers decision was unaffected by Carpenter.

Moreover, the court explained that had Shavers relied on the third-party doctrine, Carpenter would still not demand a different result. The court explained how the issue in Carpenter, involving cell phones and the monitoring of movement through them, is distinct and different from that here, which involves wired prison phones and the recording of discussions on them. As the court said, there is nothing “unique” or “technologically advanced” about prison phone calls.

As such, the court found that Stinson and Jarmon had no reasonable expectation of privacy in their prison phone calls. The court affirmed the district court’s orders denying their motion to suppress.

Read the full case: United States v. Jarmon


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.

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