State v. Brown

CourtSupreme Court of Connecticut
DecidedApril 2, 2019
DocketSC19960
StatusPublished

This text of State v. Brown (State v. Brown) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Connecticut primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Brown, (Colo. 2019).

Opinion

*********************************************** The “officially released” date that appears near the be- ginning of each opinion is the date the opinion will be pub- lished in the Connecticut Law Journal or the date it was released as a slip opinion. The operative date for the be- ginning of all time periods for filing postopinion motions and petitions for certification is the “officially released” date appearing in the opinion.

All opinions are subject to modification and technical correction prior to official publication in the Connecticut Reports and Connecticut Appellate Reports. In the event of discrepancies between the advance release version of an opinion and the latest version appearing in the Connecticut Law Journal and subsequently in the Connecticut Reports or Connecticut Appellate Reports, the latest version is to be considered authoritative.

The syllabus and procedural history accompanying the opinion as it appears in the Connecticut Law Journal and bound volumes of official reports are copyrighted by the Secretary of the State, State of Connecticut, and may not be reproduced and distributed without the express written permission of the Commission on Official Legal Publica- tions, Judicial Branch, State of Connecticut. *********************************************** STATE OF CONNECTICUT v. TERRANCE BROWN (SC 19960) Palmer, McDonald, Robinson, D’Auria, Mullins and Kahn, Js.*

Syllabus

Pursuant to statute ([Rev. to 2009] § 54-47aa), a law enforcement official may request an ex parte order from a Superior Court judge to compel a telecommunications carrier to disclose basic cell phone subscriber information and information identifying the origin and destination of each communication generated or received by the subscriber. The judge shall grant the order if the law enforcement official states a reasonable and articulable suspicion that a crime has been or is being committed. The defendant, who had been charged in multiple informations with various crimes, including burglary and larceny, for his alleged role in the theft or attempted theft of automated teller machines from gas stations and convenience stores, filed motions to suppress the historical and prospec- tive cell phone call and location data obtained by the state as a result of three ex parte orders that had been issued pursuant to § 54-47aa. A police task force had been organized to investigate a series of crimes in which an individual or individuals, using various stolen vehicles, had backed those vehicles into the stores or gas stations and removed freestanding automated teller machines. As a result of information obtained by the police, an officer conducted a motor vehicle stop of the defendant, who was released after questioning. After uncovering further information about the defendant, including his cell phone num- ber, the police determined that the defendant may have been involved in the various thefts under investigation. The police then obtained the first ex parte order, which directed the defendant’s cell phone carrier to disclose the past three months of his cell phone data and other basic subscriber information. An analysis of that data led the police to determine that the defendant had used his cell phone in relevant loca- tions during times and dates that coincided with dates on which the various thefts under investigation had occurred. On the basis of this information, the police obtained two more ex parte orders that were prospective in nature, requiring the defendant’s cell phone carrier to disclose caller identification information linked to his cell phone num- ber, including live updates every ten minutes, for two consecutive early morning periods and for a later three day period. Based on the cell phone data that had been obtained pursuant to the orders, J, who had been in communication with the defendant at certain relevant times, was arrested and taken into custody in connection with an automated teller machine theft. During their interview of J, the police revealed to J that his cell phone number was listed in the defendant’s phone log and that the cell phone data indicated that the defendant and J had contacted each other at or around the time of certain of the alleged thefts or attempted thefts. J then gave a statement implicating himself and the defendant in connection with many of the thefts and attempted thefts that had been under investigation. Relying on the state’s conces- sion that the second and third orders authorizing the disclosure of prospective cell phone data violated § 54-47aa and its determination that the first order authorizing the disclosure of historical data also violated § 54-47aa, the trial court granted the defendant’s motions to suppress all of the cell phone data, J’s statement to the police, and any potential testimony by J. The trial court also concluded that the state had failed to prove that the inevitable discovery exception to the exclu- sionary rule applied to J’s statement and potential testimony. Thereafter, the trial court granted the defendant’s motions to dismiss the charges and rendered judgments thereon, from which the state, on the granting of permission, appealed. Held: 1. The trial court correctly concluded that the state obtained the defendant’s cell phone data illegally; the state had conceded that the two court orders authorizing the disclosure of prospective cell phone data were obtained in violation of § 54-47aa, and the disclosure of historical cell phone data pursuant to the first ex parte order violated the defendant’s fourth amendment rights in light of the United States Supreme Court’s recent decision in Carpenter v. United States (138 S. Ct. 2206), in which the court held that an individual has a legitimate expectation of privacy in the historical record of his physical movements as captured through cell phone data and that the government must generally obtain a warrant supported by probable cause before acquiring such data, because the police obtained the defendant’s historical data on the basis of a reason- able and articulable suspicion, rather than on the basis of a warrant supported by probable cause. 2. The trial court correctly concluded that the suppression of the historical and prospective cell phone data that had been illegally obtained by the state was the appropriate remedy: notwithstanding the state’s claim that, because the police officers acted in reasonable reliance on the court’s order authorizing the disclosure of the historical cell phone data, they acted in good faith, and that the purpose of the exclusionary rule, namely, to deter police misconduct, did not apply under these circum- stances,, this court’s prior case law has uniformly established a bright- line rejection of the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule under the state constitution, and, accordingly, the trial court properly sup- pressed the defendant’s historical cell phone data; moreover, the state could not prevail on its claim that, with respect to the disclosure of the prospective cell phone data, suppression was not a remedy for a violation of § 54-47aa, this court having determined, after reviewing the statute’s text and legislative history, as well as related statutes, that the statute’s legislative history provided strong support for the conclusion that the legislature intended that suppression would be an appropriate remedy for violations of § 54-47aa and that the tracking of the defendant’s cell phone, in the absence of a showing of probable cause and in violation of § 54-47aa, implicated important privacy interests that are traditionally the type protected by the fourth amendment, which required the applica- tion of the exclusionary rule and the suppression of the prospective cell phone data. 3.

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State v. Brown, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-brown-conn-2019.