Marte v. Wallkill Correctional Facility

Background

Victor Marte, proceeding without a lawyer in this federal case, filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 asking the federal court to review his New York state conviction. He had pleaded guilty to criminal possession of a controlled substance in the second degree, criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree, and criminal use of drug paraphernalia in the second degree. He challenged two matters: a search of apartment 315 at 48 Burling Lane in New Rochelle, New York, and the state court’s refusal to delay his sentencing after the Supreme Court decided Carpenter v. United States.

In March 2017, Drug Enforcement Administration agents used a cell-site simulator, under a court order based on probable cause, to locate Marte’s phone at a Home Depot. Agents later spoke with Anthony Hammel, the building owner. After viewing surveillance video, Hammel entered apartment 315 with his brother and photographed items inside. The agents did not enter the apartment. A later search warrant led to the seizure of drugs, weapons, chemicals, and other items.

The state court suppressed statements Marte made after an interrogation because complete warnings about his right to remain silent had not been given. It also suppressed searches based on Marte’s statements, passcodes, and consent. But it upheld the apartment search and the seizure of items recovered from Marte when he was arrested. Marte later pleaded guilty, waived his right to appeal, and agreed that he was withdrawing all pending or decided suppression motions.

After Carpenter was decided, Marte’s lawyer asked the state court to delay sentencing so he could consider challenging the government’s use of cell-site data. The state court denied the request and sentenced Marte to ten years in prison followed by five years of post-release supervision, among other terms. New York state courts later denied Marte’s challenges to the conviction.

Apartment Search

The court denied Marte’s claims concerning the Hammel brothers’ search. The Fourth Amendment generally restricts unreasonable searches by the government, not searches conducted by private people acting independently. A private search can be treated as governmental when there is a sufficiently close connection between the government and the private person’s conduct, such as government coercion, control, or significant encouragement.

The court found no such connection here. No law-enforcement officer entered the apartment with the Hammel brothers, and the evidence credited by the state court showed that Anthony Hammel decided to enter because he was concerned about his property and the safety of the building’s tenants, including his mother. The agents told Hammel that they could not enter and could not stop him from entering, but the court held that those statements, and the agents’ warning that the apartment might contain drugs or dangerous chemicals, did not amount to coercion or significant encouragement.

Because the private search was not governmental, the court held that it did not violate the Fourth Amendment. The later search conducted under a warrant therefore was not tainted by an unconstitutional search, and Marte’s related challenge to that warrant also failed.

Cell-Site Location and Sentencing Delay

The court also denied Marte’s claim that the state court should have delayed sentencing. Carpenter held that obtaining a detailed record of a person’s movements over seven or more days was a Fourth Amendment search. The court explained that Carpenter did not decide whether the same rule applied to real-time cell-site location information.

Here, the government used a cell-site simulator once to locate Marte’s phone at a particular place. It did not use the device to create a long-term record of his movements. The court therefore agreed with the state court that Carpenter did not apply. The court also noted that the government had obtained a court order supported by probable cause and that Marte was not challenging the order or the probable-cause finding.

The court discussed Chatrie v. United States, a later Supreme Court decision concerning location-history data collected and stored by Google applications. It held that Chatrie did not change the result because the government here used a cell-site simulator rather than third-party location-history data, and Chatrie was decided eight years after Marte’s sentencing.

Because Carpenter did not apply and Marte did not show that the denial of a sentencing delay impaired his defense, the court rejected the sentencing-delay claim. The court also stated that Marte’s related ineffective-assistance claims—based on counsel’s failure to seek suppression of the cell-site evidence or to seek withdrawal of the guilty plea—necessarily failed because he could not establish the required prejudice.

Disposition

The court denied the petition in its entirety and directed the clerk to close the case. It did not decide the government’s exhaustion argument concerning the cell-site claim because the court denied that claim on the merits.