Peo v. Mitchell

Colorado Court of Appeals·Decided July 17, 2025·No. 23CA0086·Unpublished

Opinion

23CA0086 Peo v Mitchell 07-17-2025 COLORADO COURT OF APPEALS

Court of Appeals No. 23CA0086 Boulder County District Court No. 21CR98 Honorable Thomas F. Mulvahill, Judge

The People of the State of Colorado, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Sheridan Orlando Jauques Mitchell, Defendant-Appellant.

JUDGMENT AFFIRMED

Division VI

Opinion by JUDGE SULLIVAN Tow and Yun, JJ., concur

NOT PUBLISHED PURSUANT TO C.A.R. 35(e)

Announced July 17, 2025

Philip J. Weiser, Attorney General, Leo T. Nguyen, Assistant Attorney General Fellow, Denver, Colorado, for Plaintiff-Appellee

Megan A. Ring, Colorado State Public Defender, Joseph Paul Hough, Deputy State Public Defender, Denver, Colorado, for Defendant-Appellant

¶1 Defendant, Sheridan Orlando Jauques Mitchell, appeals the judgment of conviction entered on a jury verdict finding him guilty of three counts of possession with intent to sell or distribute a controlled substance and three counts of unlawful possession of a controlled substance. We affirm.

I. Background

¶2 Mitchell, while on parole, escaped from a community placement program. The Department of Corrections’ Fugitive Apprehension Unit, with assistance from the United States Marshals Service and other law enforcement agencies, investigated his escape. At the time, Mitchell had three active arrest warrants.

¶3 Officers eventually located Mitchell at a residence in Lafayette by using cell site location information, known colloquially as “pinging” Mitchell’s cell phone. After Mitchell exited the residence and entered a vehicle, officers contacted Mitchell and placed him under arrest. Officers then searched Mitchell and the vehicle, finding a firearm, $2,648 in cash, and various amounts of methamphetamine, cocaine, and oxycodone pills.

¶4 Before trial, Mitchell filed (1) multiple motions to suppress evidence based on officers allegedly violating his Fourth

Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures and (2) a motion to dismiss for alleged discovery violations after the Marshals Service failed to disclose requested cell site location information. The district court denied Mitchell’s motions.

¶5 The district court also granted two requests by the prosecution to continue the trial date, one due to the unavailability of two prosecution witnesses and one due to the prosecutor contracting COVID-19 a week before trial.

¶6 On appeal, Michell asserts that the district court erred by (1) denying his motions to suppress evidence; (2) denying his motion to dismiss for discovery violations; and (3) violating his statutory right to a speedy trial. We address each contention in turn.

II. Fourth Amendment

¶7 Mitchell contends that the district court erred by denying his motions to suppress, arguing that law enforcement officers’ warrantless “pinging” of his cell phone and search of his vehicle violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. We aren’t persuaded.

A. Applicable Law and Standard of Review

¶8 The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” See also Colo. Const. art. II, § 7.

¶9 But this prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures doesn’t apply with the same force to parolees as it does to others. See Samson v. California, 547 U.S. 843, 855 (2006); People v. McCullough, 6 P.3d 774, 777 (Colo. 2000). Parolees have a “substantially diminished expectation of privacy” because the state possesses an overwhelming interest in supervising parolees to reduce recidivism. Samson, 547 U.S. at 853, 855. As a result, a suspicionless search of a parolee, when authorized by state law, is generally considered reasonable under the totality of the circumstances. See id. at 846; United States v. Mathews, 928 F.3d 968, 976 (10th Cir. 2019).

¶ 10 Colorado law reflects this understanding of a parolee’s diminished rights under the Fourth Amendment. For example, Colorado law generally prohibits government entities from obtaining location information regarding a person’s electronic device without

a warrant, subpoena, or court order, § 16-3-303.5(2), C.R.S. 2024, but this restriction doesn’t apply to the division of adult parole within the Department of Corrections, § 16-3-303.5(4).

¶ 11 Similarly, like the California law discussed in Samson, Colorado law requires that an offender eligible for parole agree to certain conditions before being granted parole. See § 17-2- 201(5)(f)(I), C.R.S. 2024. A prospective parolee must, for example, sign a written agreement in which they agree, among other things, to “allow the community parole officer to make searches of the parolee’s person, residence, or vehicle.” § 17-2-201(5)(f)(I)(D); see also In re Miranda, 2012 CO 69, ¶ 13 (“[P]arole officers may search parolees’ persons, residences, or vehicles unannounced, without a warrant, and without reasonable suspicion.”). A warrantless parole search under this provision is constitutional, even in the absence of “reasonable grounds,” if the search is (1) conducted pursuant to

any applicable statute and (2) not arbitrary, capricious, or harassing.1 McCullough, 6 P.3d at 781.

¶ 12 We review a trial court’s ruling on a motion to suppress as a mixed question of law and fact. People v. Alameno, 193 P.3d 830, 834 (Colo. 2008). “[W]e defer to the trial court’s factual findings so long as there is sufficient evidence in the record to support those findings, but we review the trial court’s legal conclusions de novo.” Id.

B. Analysis

¶ 13 Based on Mitchell’s substantially reduced expectation of privacy as a parolee, we perceive no error in the district court’s orders denying his motions to suppress evidence.

¶ 14 We first turn to whether the officers’ “pinging” of Mitchell’s cell phone and subsequent search of his vehicle were performed pursuant to any applicable statute. See McCullough, 6 P.3d at 781. For purposes of our analysis, we will assume, without deciding, that

1 The court in People v. McCullough, 6 P.3d 774, 781 (Colo. 2000),

also imposed a third requirement — that the search be performed in furtherance of the purposes of parole. The United States Supreme Court, however, later rejected that requirement in United States v. Knights, 534 U.S. 112, 116-18 (2001). See People v. Samuels, 228 P.3d 229, 234 n.1 (Colo. App. 2009).

“pinging” a cell phone to obtain its real-time location information constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment. See People v. Licona-Ortega, 2022 COA 27, ¶ 19 (making this same assumption).

¶ 15 In opposing Mitchell’s suppression motions, the prosecution argued, in part, that law enforcement authorities collected cell site location information for Mitchell’s phone and searched his vehicle under the authority conferred over parolees by sections 17-2- 201(5)(f)(I)(D) and 16-3-303.5(4). The district court agreed and adopted the prosecution’s position.

¶ 16 The record supports the court’s determination. During a motions hearing, one of the Department of Corrections community parole officers who arrested Mitchell testified that his job duties included investigating parolees, like Mitchell, who had active arrest warrants. He explained that Mitchell participated in a parole community placement program and had agreed as a condition of the program to allow community parole officers to search his person and vehicles. The officer stated that officers searched Mitchell because, as a parolee, he remained under the Department of Corrections’ supervision. Nothing in the officer’s testimony, or in the record generally, suggests that law enforcement authorities

were investigating Mitchell for reasons unrelated to his status as an escaped parolee. Thus, the record supports the court’s determination that the officers’ “pinging” of Mitchell’s cell phone and the search of his vehicle were conducted pursuant to their statutory authority over parolees. See §§ 17-2-201(5)(f)(I)(D), 16-3- 303.5(4).

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