A jury convicted Charles Fulton, Sr., on four counts of sex trafficking and one count of conspiracy. He appealed, arguing that the search of his cellphone should have been suppressed.

A juvenile probation officer learned from the father of a girl she supervised that the girl was pictured in an online advertisement offering her services as an “escort.” The officer began investigating and discovered that the house where the girl had been arrested was a location where a host of other girls had been arrested for prostitution. She spoke with some of the girls and compiled a list of names and ages. Charles Fulton, Sr. was a common link to the girls. Agents discovered that Fulton acted as the girls’ pimp, directing them to prostitution dates, providing them with food, condoms, housing, and drugs.

Galveston police had obtained a search warrant for one of the houses where the prostitution was based. The warrant, though, was due to a separate investigation into Fulton’s narcotics activities. His cellphone was seized, and nine days later the police obtained a second warrant to examine its contents. They, however, weren’t able to bypass the phone’s security features. Around the same time, an FBI agent assisting with the sex trafficking investigation learned that the Galveston police had the phone. He obtained a federal warrant to search it, and it took a year for the FBI to finally access the data. The FBI discovered evidence that helped it piece together Fulton’s involvement in the trafficking.

Fulton argued that agents obtained evidence on his cellphone in violation of the Fourth Amendment. He first argued that the cellphone wasn’t one of the items to be seized in the original warrant. The Government alleged that the warrant’s reference to “ledgers” was close enough.

The Fifth Circuit held that “ledgers” wasn’t a close-enough equivalent to a cellphone. It said, “There was nothing in the Galveston warrant suggesting that anything similar to computers or even electronics was to be seized.” It held, “Though a ledger can serve one of the myriad purposes of a cellphone, we do not extend the concept of ‘functional equivalency’ to items so different, particularly one as specific, distinguishable, and anticipatable as a cellphone.” The Court, nonetheless, found that the federal search warrant was “sought and executed by a law enforcement officer in good faith,” and held that the cellphone evidence was properly admitted.

United States v. Fulton