Nelson v. State

312 Ga. 375

863 S.E.2d 61

NELSON

v.The STATE.

S21A0773

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: September 8, 2021

Mitchell D. Durham, 301 Washington Avenue, Marietta, Georgia 30060, Jill Elaine Stahlman, 275 Washington Avenue, Marietta, Georgia 30060-1959, for Appellant.

Clark Douglas Cunningham, Georgia State University College of Law, P.O. Box 4037, Atlanta, Georgia 30302-4037, for Neutral Amicus.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, John Richard Edwards, A.D.A., Flynn Duncan Broady, Jr., D.A., Linda Jeanne Dunikoski, A.D.A., Cobb County District Attorney's Office, 70 Haynes Street, Marietta, Georgia 30090, Stephanie Adrean Green, Senior A.D.A., Cobb County District Attorney's Office, 70 Haynes Street, Marietta, Georgia 30090, for Appellee.

Peterson, Justice.

This Court granted murder defendant Corey Nelson's application for interlocutory appeal of the trial court's denial of his motion to suppress evidence. At issue is evidence extracted from his cell phone and other electronic devices pursuant to search warrants. Nelson argues that the delay of more than two years between the date on which the electronic devices were seized pursuant to a search warrant for his residence, and the dates on which the devices were examined pursuant to subsequent search warrants for their contents, violated his Fourth Amendment rights. Although we posed a question to the parties regarding the significant legal question of when a search warrant has been executed, we need not — and so do not — answer that question to decide this case. The evidence challenged here was extracted days after warrants issued in 2020. The only challenge Nelson now offers to this evidence is the long delay between the 2017 seizure of the devices and the 2020 issuance of the warrants. But his possessory interest in the devices was greatly diminished by the combination of his incarceration for the entire period of the delay and his failure to request the devices’ return. Thus, we conclude that the trial court did not err in denying the motion to suppress, and we affirm.

On October 14, 2017, Cobb County police officers responded to a report of a shooting at a residence, where they found Khristopher Dixon dead from multiple gunshot wounds. Nelson was identified as a suspect, in part based on a post made on the victim's Instagram account just minutes before the first 911 call reporting the shooting. On October 15, 2017, Detective Philip Stoddard obtained and executed a warrant to search Nelson's home, including for electronic communication devices. Pursuant to the warrant, the police seized an iPhone, a Samsung cell phone, and a laptop computer. Nelson was arrested on the same day. On January 4, 2018, a Cobb County grand jury indicted Nelson for malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.

On January 18, 2018, Stoddard obtained separate warrants to search each of Nelson's devices for electronic data related to the crimes. On that same day, he submitted a written request for forensic analysis of each device to what is now known as the Cobb Police Department's Technology Based Crimes Unit ("TBCU"). But more than a year passed before TBCU analysts performed the examinations: data extraction was completed for the iPhone on February 6, 2019; the Samsung phone on January 8, 2020; and the laptop on January 9, 2020.¹

Nelson filed a motion to suppress the evidence taken from these devices, arguing that the January 2018 warrants were void because they had not been executed within ten days as required by the warrants themselves and by OCGA § 17-5-25.² At a hearing, the State offered various excuses for the delay, including that the TBCU was understaffed and shifting to a new system for tracking requests for forensic tasks, that different matters such as missing persons cases may have taken higher priority, and that data extraction is time consuming. On February 4, 2020, the trial court granted Nelson's motion to suppress on the ground that the State had failed to comply with OCGA § 17-5-25 by not extracting the data within ten days of the issuance of the warrants. Following that order, Detective Stoddard applied for and was granted new search warrants, which were issued on February 7, 2020. Within ten days, the TBCU extracted data anew from the iPhone (on February 11, 2020), the Samsung cell phone (on February 14, 2020), and the laptop (on February 13, 2020).³

Nelson again moved to suppress the evidence extracted from the devices. He argued among other things that the delay of more than two years from the date on which the electronic devices were seized until the date of the data extraction pursuant to the 2020 warrants violated his federal and state constitutional rights against unreasonable search and seizure, as well as his federal constitutional due process rights. The trial court denied the motion. The trial court concluded that the 2020 search warrants were properly issued and executed, ruling that they were supported by probable cause and executed within ten days of issuance, and that any delay in the filing of their returns did not render them invalid. The court also held that the delay between the seizure of the electronic devices and the issuance of the 2020 search warrants was not unreasonable. The court explained that it was "satisfied with the reason for the delay as presented by the State" in obtaining the new warrants — identifying that reason in the order as a lack of manpower and resources within the TBCU, as well as the necessity of obtaining the new warrants given the suppression of the evidence pursuant to the 2018 warrants. The trial court found no substantial violation of Nelson's rights arising from the delay, noting that he had been in custody since October 2017.

This Court granted Nelson's interlocutory application, which argued that the delay between the seizure of the electronic devices and their searches pursuant to the 2020 warrants was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. We heard oral argument in the case on August 26, 2021.⁴

In reviewing a trial court's ruling on a defendant's motion to suppress evidence, the trial court's decision with regard to questions of fact and credibility must be accepted unless clearly erroneous; we will not disturb the trial court's findings based on conflicting evidence if there is any evidence to support them. See State v. Rosenbaum , 305 Ga. 442, 449 (2), 826 S.E.2d 18 (2019). The trial court's legal conclusions are reviewed de novo, however. See id. at 451 (2), 826 S.E.2d 18.

Here, the trial court decided that the warrant authorizing the seizure of the devices at issue was insufficiently particular to allow a thorough review of the electronic data contained therein, such that additional search warrants were required. We need not decide whether this holding was correct because we conclude that the trial court did not err in declining to suppress the electronic data ultimately culled pursuant to the 2020 warrants.

A seizure that is "lawful at its inception can nevertheless violate the Fourth Amendment" due to subsequent events that unreasonably infringe upon a person's possessory interests in the seized property. United States v. Jacobsen , 466 U.S. 109, 124, 104 S.Ct. 1652, 80 L.Ed.2d 85 (1984). Delay in obtaining a warrant to search a seized item is one example of conduct that can unlawfully interfere with a defendant's possessory interests. See Rosenbaum , 305 Ga. at 454-455 (2) (e), 826 S.E.2d 18 ; United States v. Mitchell , 565 F.3d 1347, 1350-1351 (11th Cir. 2009). The reasonableness of the delay in getting a warrant is determined on a case-by-case basis, in the light of all of the facts and circumstances. See Rosenbaum , 305 Ga. at 450 (2), 826 S.E.2d 18. We have adopted a four-factor test for balancing governmental and private interests in this context, considering (1) the significance of the interference...