Zul Mohamed v. the State of Texas

• Court: Texas Court of Appeals, 7th District (Amarillo)
• Decided: May 26, 2026
• Docket: 07-25-00124-CR
• Status: Published

Opinion

In The Court of Appeals Seventh District of Texas at Amarillo

No. 07-25-00124-CR No. 07-25-00125-CR

ZUL MOHAMED, APPELLANT

V.

THE STATE OF TEXAS, APPELLEE

On Appeal from the 462nd District Court Denton County, Texas1 Trial Court No. F21-1205-462, F21-1206-462, Honorable Lee Ann Breading, Presiding

May 26, 2026 MEMORANDUM OPINION Before PARKER, C.J., and DOSS and YARBROUGH, JJ.

Appellant, Zul Mohamed, appeals from the convictions rendered against him in two

cases. In the first, he was convicted on eighty-one counts of fraudulent use of an

application for ballot by mail.2 In the second, he was convicted on twenty-five counts of

1 This case was transferred from the Second Court of Appeals in Fort Worth pursuant to a docket

equalization order from the Supreme Court of Texas. See TEX. GOV’T CODE § 73.001. We apply that court’s precedent to the extent it conflicts with our own. TEX. R. APP. P. 41.3. 2 TEX. ELEC. CODE § 84.0041(a), (d)(3). This offense is a third-degree felony. knowingly possessing another voter’s official ballot or official carrier envelope.3 Before

trial, Appellant moved to suppress evidence obtained through a GPS tracking order and

a subsequent search warrant. The trial court denied the motion. Appellant then pleaded

guilty, and a jury assessed punishment. On the ballot-application counts, the jury

assessed ten years of confinement, probated for ten years. On the ballot-possession

counts, the jury assessed four years of confinement.

Appellant raises six issues. By the first five, he challenges the suppression ruling.

The sixth challenges a condition of probation that restricts election-related activity. We

modify the judgment to strike two provisions of the probation conditions, and we affirm

the judgment as modified.

BACKGROUND

At the suppression hearing Captain Edward Barrett of the Denton County Sheriff’s

Office testified that he applied for and obtained both the GPS tracking order and the

search warrant. The investigation began when the local election office reported

suspicious mail-in ballot requests. More than eighty applications listed the same address,

a private mailbox at a pack-and-ship store. That mailbox was registered to “Aly Karmi,”

a fictitious person. The application to open the box used false identification, false

insurance information, and a false notary acknowledgment.

Barrett devised a plan to place a GPS tracker inside a box containing ballots and,

through the device together with continuous visual surveillance, to identify the person who

3 TEX. ELEC. CODE § 86.006(f), (g), (g-1). This offense is a second-degree felony.

2 retrieved the package. Officers sent twenty-five ballots to the mailbox under the names

listed on the fraudulent applications, with the tracker placed in the same box. Three days

later the registered owner of the box was notified that a package awaited pickup. A man

later identified as Appellant arrived, claimed ownership of the box, took the package, and

placed it in his car. Officers followed the vehicle to a residence at 1616 Bennington Drive

in Dallas County. Another officer observed the vehicle pull through the alley and into the

attached garage. Throughout the surveillance the team maintained visual contact with

the vehicle.

While Barrett drafted the probable-cause affidavit, a woman in a tan vehicle arrived

at the residence. She approached the front door, returned to her vehicle with an item,

placed the item in her trunk, and drove away. Officers followed and stopped her. They

determined that she had not removed any evidence from the house. The GPS tracker

remained inside the residence the entire time. Investigators knew of this event before

they submitted the warrant application, yet Barrett’s affidavit did not mention it.

Appellant also points to several discrepancies between the descriptions of the

residence that appear in the affidavit, the warrant, and the testimony at the hearing. The

affidavit referred to the address as 1616 Bennington Drive in both Denton and Dallas

Counties. The warrant placed the address solely in Dallas County. The affidavit and

testimony described the dwelling as a single-story home; the warrant described it both as

a single-story house and as an apartment residence. The affidavit described the brick as

brown; the warrant described it as red; and Barrett testified that the brick appeared pink

or reddish brown depending on the viewer. The affidavit stated that the property was

controlled by “Zulirza Mohamed.” The warrant identified the controlling party only as a 3 suspect resident. Evidence at the hearing established that Appellant’s parents own the

home.

Barrett explained that the brick could reasonably be described as red, reddish

brown, or brown. The home sits approximately 150 yards inside Dallas County, just

across the line from Denton County, where Barrett primarily worked. That circumstance

accounted for the affidavit’s reference to Denton County. Barrett conceded that the

warrant’s description of the property as an apartment residence was an error. He

confirmed that he drafted the affidavit while parked about a block from the home and that

he later executed the warrant at the same residence he had kept under surveillance.

Sherbanoo Mohamed testified that she and her husband own the home and that no one

named Zulirza Mohamed has ever owned or controlled it.

ANALYSIS

A. Constitutionality of Article 18B and Probable Cause for the Search

By his first and second issues Appellant challenges the legal foundation for the

GPS tracking order and the search warrant that followed. He contends that probable

cause did not support either order because Barrett’s affidavits rested on speculation that

the person who collected the ballots was the fraudster and would transport them to a

location containing further evidence. He further contends that the statutory scheme

authorizing the GPS order, Article 18B of the Code of Criminal Procedure, violates the

Fourth Amendment by supplanting the probable-cause standard with a lower threshold,

by failing to require a judicial finding of probable cause, and by authorizing anticipatory

tracking for mere evidence. We overrule both issues.

4 We review the trial court’s ruling on a motion to suppress under a bifurcated

standard. We afford almost total deference to the trial court’s determination of historical

facts supported by the record, and we review de novo the application of law to those facts,

including questions of constitutional law. Brodnex v. State, 485 S.W.3d 432, 436 (Tex.

Crim. App. 2016); Guzman v. State, 955 S.W.2d 85, 89 (Tex. Crim. App. 1997).

We need not reach the constitutionality of Article 18B. The record establishes that

Barrett did not rely on the GPS tracker alone to develop probable cause for the search of

the residence. Barrett testified that the vehicle was under constant visual surveillance

from the moment Appellant collected the package at the pack-and-ship store until it

arrived at 1616 Bennington Drive. Asked whether officers had eyes on the same vehicle

the entire time, independent of the GPS tracker, Barrett answered yes. While he drafted

the probable-cause affidavit from about a block away, he received real-time radio updates

from the multi-agency surveillance team that kept continuous visual contact with the

vehicle.

Under the independent source doctrine, evidence derived from a source separate

from any allegedly unlawful conduct is not subject to suppression. Wehrenberg v. State,

416 S.W.3d 458, 465–70 (Tex. Crim. App. 2013); see also Johnson v. State, 871 S.W.2d

744, 750–51 (Tex. Crim. App. 1994). Even if the GPS tracking order rested on an

unconstitutional statute, the warrant remained valid on the strength of the independent

visual surveillance that placed the vehicle at the residence. The validity of the search

therefore does not depend on the constitutionality of Article 18B.

5 This conclusion finds support in United States v. Estrada, 683 F. App’x 308 (5th

Cir. 2017) (per curiam). In Estrada, the Fifth Circuit assumed that the installation of a

mobile tracking device under the former version of Texas’s mobile tracking statute

violated the Fourth Amendment because it was authorized only upon reasonable

suspicion. Id. at 310. Nevertheless, the court held that evidence seized from the

defendant’s stash house remained admissible under the independent source doctrine.

Officers had conducted extensive physical surveillance unaided by the tracking device,

and the lead investigator testified that he would have continued the investigation through

physical surveillance if the tracking order had been denied. Id. at 311–12. The court

emphasized that the search warrant affidavit did not reference any information gleaned

from the tracking device and that the officers’ decision to conduct a knock-and-talk was

motivated by the physical surveillance and the defendant’s own admissions. Id.

Estrada reveals important parallels to the present case. Captain Barrett testified

that he would have continued surveillance through other means if the GPS order had not

been granted, and the record establishes that officers maintained constant visual

surveillance of the vehicle independent of the GPS tracker. As in Estrada, the search

warrant affidavit here did not rely on any information derived from the GPS device. See

id. Accordingly, we hold that the independent source doctrine applies and that the

constitutionality of Article 18B does not affect the validity of the search warrant. See

Wehrenberg, 416 S.W.3d at 465–70.

Appellant’s probable-cause challenge fares no better on its own terms. The

application for the GPS tracking order established that more than eighty mail-in ballot

applications had been directed to the same private mailbox, many duplicating applications 6 already on file. Officers had confirmed with several of the listed voters that they had not

submitted the requests. The mailbox was registered to a fictitious person under a false

identification. On these facts the magistrate could reasonably conclude that whoever

collected the package, whether or not aware of its contents, would lead investigators to

the person who had fraudulently requested the ballots. See State v. Jordan, 342 S.W.3d

565, 569 (Tex. Crim. App. 2011) (directing courts to uphold the magistrate’s probable

cause determination if it had a substantial basis to conclude that probable cause existed

to issue the warrant); Parker v. State, 206 S.W.3d 593, 597 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006)

(“Probable cause to search exists when reasonably trustworthy facts and circumstances

within the knowledge of the officer on the scene would lead a man of reasonable prudence

to believe that the instrumentality of a crime or evidence of a crime will be found.”); see

also State v. Duarte, 389 S.W.3d 349, 354 (Tex. Crim. App. 2012) (describing the

probable cause standard as “flexible” and “nondemanding”).

To the extent Appellant argues that the ballots constitute derivative contraband

rather than contraband per se, and that this distinction defeats probable cause, the

contention is waived for inadequate briefing. He cites no authority that the

characterization of the ballots affects the probable-cause analysis, nor does he explain

why an unwitting courier could not still lead investigators to evidence of the offense. See

TEX. R. APP. P. 38.1(i); Bohannan v. State, 546 S.W.3d 166, 180 (Tex. Crim. App. 2017)

(declining to address appellant’s due process argument as inadequately briefed, holding,

“We will not make novel legal arguments for him.”).

A separate ground likewise defeats Appellant’s challenge to the GPS order. A

person has no privacy interest in mail or packages addressed to another. Galindo v. 7 State, No. 02-03-00039-CR, 2004 Tex. App. LEXIS 8834, at *4 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth

Sept. 30, 2004, pet. ref’d). Without a privacy interest, a defendant has no standing to

contest the search of the item. Kothe v. State, 152 S.W.3d 54, 59 (Tex. Crim. App. 2004).

The package was not addressed to Appellant. His position thus depends on two

propositions that cannot stand together: that the package was not addressed to him, and

that he nonetheless retained a privacy interest sufficient to challenge the GPS tracker

placed inside it.

We overrule Appellant’s first and second issues.

B. Alleged Material Omissions Supporting Probable Cause Affidavit

In his third issue, Appellant contends that Barrett made material omissions in the

search warrant affidavit by failing to disclose that an unidentified woman briefly

approached the residence while Barrett was drafting the affidavit, picked up an item,

placed it in her trunk, and left. Appellant argues that this omission “breached the integrity

of [Barrett’s] operation in a way that diminished the probable cause conclusion.” We

disagree.

In Franks v. Delaware, the Supreme Court held that a warrant is invalid if the affiant

makes an affirmative misrepresentation that is material to probable cause. 438 U.S. 154,

155–56 (1978). The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has assumed without deciding that

Franks applies to material omissions as well. Diaz v. State, 632 S.W.3d 889, 892 (Tex.

Crim. App. 2021); see also Vardeman v. State, No. 02-19-00387-CR, 2021 Tex. App.

LEXIS 8368, at *21 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth Oct. 14, 2021, no pet.) (mem. op., not

designated for publication). To prevail on a Franks claim based on an alleged omission,

8 the defendant must establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the omission was

made knowingly, intentionally, or with reckless disregard for the truth in an attempt to

mislead the magistrate, and that the omitted information was material to the probable

cause determination. Martin v. State, No. 02-08-00128-CR, 2009 Tex. App. LEXIS 6141,

at *9–10 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth Aug. 6, 2009, no pet.) (mem. op., not designated for

publication); Vardeman, 2021 Tex. App. LEXIS 8368, at *21.

The record refutes Appellant’s claim. Barrett testified that the woman never

entered the residence. After officers stopped and identified her, investigators concluded

she was not involved in the ballot scheme. Barrett testified that, based on the

identification and questioning, the officers did not believe she had any of the evidence

they were looking for. The surveillance team’s continuous visual contact with the

residence confirmed that nothing changed during the woman’s brief visit, and real-time

GPS monitoring corroborated that conclusion.

Even if Barrett had included these facts in the affidavit, they would not have

defeated probable cause. The possibility that the woman might have removed evidence

does not undermine probable cause where the surveillance team kept continuous eyes

on the residence, confirmed she never entered, and determined through investigation that

she was not involved. Appellant has not shown that the omitted information was material

or that Barrett withheld it to mislead the magistrate.

We overrule Appellant’s third issue.

9 C. Sufficiency of the Search Warrant’s Description

In his fourth issue, Appellant challenges the search warrant’s description of the

home, urging that the warrant inaccurately described the brick and, in one place,

described the property as an apartment residence.

The Fourth Amendment requires that a warrant describe with sufficient particularity

the place to be searched. Bonds v. State, 403 S.W.3d 867, 874–75 (Tex. Crim. App.

2013).

The constitutional objectives of requiring a “particular” description of the place to be searched include: (1) ensuring that the officer searches the right place; (2) confirming that probable cause is, in fact, established for the place described in the warrant; (3) limiting the officer’s discretion and narrowing the scope of his search; (4) minimizing the danger of mistakenly searching the person or property of an innocent bystander or property owner; and (5) informing the owner of the officer’s authority to search that specific location.

Id. at 875.

The Constitution does not require a perfect description, though a facially

insufficient one may invalidate the warrant. Id. The Court of Criminal Appeals has

recognized that an officer’s familiarity with the property can ameliorate inaccuracies in the

description. Id. at 876–77 & n.30.

The variation in the description of the brick, which appeared in the affidavit as

brown, in the warrant as red, and in the testimony as pink, does not invalidate the warrant.

The descriptions were within reason; Barrett testified that the brick could be described as

red, reddish brown, or brown depending on the viewer. Beyond color, the warrant

correctly identified the address, the style of home, the side of the street on which it sits,

10 the appearance of the mailbox, and the direction the home faces. Those descriptors

enabled the officers to locate the property and distinguish it from others in the community.

See Id.

That leaves only the single reference to the property as an apartment residence,

set against the warrant’s other descriptions of it as a single-story house. The stray

reference is best read as describing the surrounding area rather than the home itself, and

it follows the warrant’s identification of the property as a single-story house. The affidavit

is not challenged for its statements that the suspect vehicle was followed to 1616

Bennington Drive, and that the vehicle containing the box of ballots entered an attached

garage there. This, as well as Barrett’s other unchallenged statements, resolve any

ambiguity created by the descriptive errors and render the warrant sufficiently particular.

We overrule Appellant’s fourth issue.

D. Challenge to Requirement for a Neutral and Detached Magistrate

By his fifth issue, Appellant urges that the trial court should have suppressed the

search results because the judge who signed the warrant failed to act as a neutral and

detached magistrate. See United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 914–15 (1984).

According to Appellant, the variations between the affidavit and the warrant are so severe

that they demonstrate the magistrate merely rubber-stamped the warrant.

Appellant cites no authority for the standard of review on this question, and none

for the proposition that descriptive variations between an affidavit and a warrant suffice

to show that a magistrate has abdicated her role. The case Appellant cites, United States

v. Decker, involved circumstances of a different order. There, Eighth Circuit affirmed the 11 decision of the trial court, which found a warrant glaringly omitted the items to be seized

and lacked a prosecutor’s signature required by Missouri law, as well as the magistrate’s

testimony that he did not read the warrant but relied on what the officer told him. 956

F.2d 773, 777 (8th Cir. 1992).

The affidavit and warrant here suffer from no comparable defects. The warrant

lists the items to be seized, and the only variations are minor descriptive differences in

the property to be searched. Decker is inapposite, and nothing else in the record

suggests that the magistrate failed to act as a neutral and detached magistrate.

We overrule Appellant’s fifth issue.

E. Conditions of Probation

By his sixth issue, Appellant urges that the probation condition prohibiting him from

engaging in election-related activities violates the First Amendment. Among the

conditions of probation, the trial court ordered that Appellant:

shall not engage or participate in any election-related activities, to include but not limited to: registering voters, accessing or requesting voter data, assisting any voter to complete a ballot or ballot application, poll watching or poll greeting, working or volunteering for any political campaign, and campaigning or electioneering of any kind.

Appellant objects to the condition as a blanket prohibition on political speech. He

proposes instead that he be required to report activities such as registering a post office

box or making a campaign declaration or donation, so that his conduct could be

monitored. The trial court overruled the objection.

12 Article 42A.051 of the Code of Criminal Procedure authorizes the trial court to grant

community supervision and impose conditions. TEX. CODE CRIM. PROC. art.

42A.051(a)(2), (3). The trial court’s discretion is broad but not unfettered. Butler v. State,

189 S.W.3d 299, 303 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006). A condition must bear a reasonable

relationship to the treatment of the accused and the protection of the public. Simpson v.

State, 772 S.W.2d 276, 280–81 (Tex. App.—Amarillo 1989, no pet.). A condition is invalid

if it has no relationship to the offense, addresses conduct that is not in itself criminal, and

forbids conduct unrelated to future criminality or the statutory ends of community

supervision. Id. That a condition affects a constitutional right does not by itself render it

invalid. Cochran v. State, 563 S.W.3d 374, 379 (Tex. App.—Texarkana 2018, no pet.).

When a condition is invalid, the proper remedy is reformation by deletion of the offending

language. Belt v. State, 127 S.W.3d 277, 281 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 2004, no pet.).

A prior restraint is an administrative or judicial order forbidding certain

communications before they occur. Tex. Mut. Ins. Co. v. Sur. Bank, N.A., 156 S.W.3d

125, 128 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 2005, no pet.) (quoting Alexander v. United States, 509

U.S. 544, 550 (1993)). Courts have nonetheless upheld probation terms that limit speech

or association in ways tied to the offense. See, e.g., United States v. Halverson, 897 F.3d

645, 657–58 (5th Cir. 2018) (banning social-media use for an offender convicted of

possessing child pornography); Tyra v. State, 644 S.W.2d 865, 868 (Tex. App.—Amarillo

1982, no pet.) (prohibiting association with persons of disreputable character); United

States v. Tonry, 605 F.2d 144, 150–52 (5th Cir. 1979) (prohibiting a probationer convicted

of election-law violations from running for office or engaging in political activity).

13 In Tonry, the Fifth Circuit considered a probation term barring a defendant

convicted of federal election-law violations from running for political office or engaging in

political activity during probation. 605 F.2d at 146, 150–52. The court recognized that

political activity is protected expression but sustained the condition as tied to the purposes

of the election statutes and of probation: rehabilitation of the probationer and protection

of the public. Id. at 150–51. The court explained that such a condition “assures that the

defendant, while free to return to community life and earn his livelihood, will not be

tempted to engage in illicit electoral activity during his probation, thus serving the purpose

of protection.” Id. at 151.

The same reasoning applies here. Appellant was convicted of statutes addressing

fraudulent solicitation of mail-in ballots and unlawful possession of other voters’ ballots.

The enumerated activities in the trial court’s condition, registering voters, accessing or

requesting voter data, assisting any voter to complete a ballot or ballot application, poll

watching or poll greeting, and working or volunteering for any political campaign, each

bear a direct and reasonable relationship to the conduct of conviction. They place

Appellant outside positions in which he could repeat or facilitate the offense, while leaving

him free to vote, to speak about elections in his personal capacity, and to engage in the

broader civic life of the community. See Simpson, 772 S.W.2d at 280–81. The

enumerated restrictions therefore stand.

Some parts of the condition, however, are not so tailored. The phrase “to include

but not limited to” leaves Appellant subject to enforcement for an unspecified universe of

conduct that may have no connection to ballot fraud, and “campaigning or electioneering

of any kind” reaches campaigns for non-political offices and other matters far afield from 14 the conduct of conviction. Each operates as a vague or overbroad restraint on protected

speech. See id. The same is true of the umbrella phrase “any election-related activities,”

which standing alone provides no notice of what conduct is forbidden. With the open-

ended language stricken and the enumerated list left in place, the condition gives

Appellant clear notice of the prohibited conduct and remains tied to the purposes of

probation.

Appellant’s proposed alternative would seek to limit the restriction to receiving mail

at addresses other than his home. He cites no authority, and we are aware of none,

requiring that a probation condition be confined to the precise method of the offense. The

conditions Appellant prefers would not foreclose unlawful access to voter or campaign

information; they would only redirect where such material is delivered. We therefore

reject Appellant’s proposed substitute.

We sustain Appellant’s sixth issue in part and overrule it in part. We modify

condition (ff) of the order of community supervision to delete the phrases “any election-

related activities,” “to include but not limited to,” and “campaigning or electioneering of

any kind.” As modified, the condition reads: Appellant “shall not engage in registering

voters, accessing or requesting voter data, assisting any voter to complete a ballot or

ballot application, poll watching or poll greeting, or working or volunteering for any political

campaign.”

CONCLUSION

We modify condition (ff) of Appellant’s order of community supervision to delete

the phrases “any election-related activities,” “to include but not limited to,” and

15 “campaigning or electioneering of any kind.” The remaining enumerated restrictions

stand.

As modified, the trial court’s judgment is affirmed.

Lawrence M. Doss Justice

Do not publish.