People v. Jiles
Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York · 2017-12-22
The case involved the conviction of Sharad Jiles for two counts each of second-degree murder and first-degree robbery, among other charges, stemming from a robbery and fatal shooting in an apartment. The defendant sought to suppress historical cell site location information obtained from his phone records via a court order under the federal Stored Communications Act without a showing of probable cause, arguing that it constituted a warrantless search under the Fourth Amendment and the New York Constitution. The Appellate Division affirmed the conviction, holding that no warrant was required because the third-party doctrine applied to the location data voluntarily conveyed to the service provider. The court also rejected the defendant's Batson challenge regarding peremptory strikes and concluded that any error in admitting the location information was harmless given the overwhelming identification evidence from victims and other phone records.