Case: Carpenter v. United States
2:12-cr-20218 | U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan
Filed Date: April 4, 2012
Case Ongoing
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Case Summary
This was a criminal case about whether the government could use months of historical cellphone location records to help convict a man for a string of armed robberies without first getting a warrant. The prosecution began on April 4, 2012, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. The United States prosecuted the Plaintiff and others for Hobbs Act robberies and related firearm charges under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1951(a) and 924(c). Plaintiff was represented by defense counsel, while the government was represented by the United States Attorney’s Office; the prosecution sought convictions and substantial prison terms, and the defense sought dismissal of charges, suppression of cellphone-location evidence, acquittal, and a new trial.
On October 21, 2013, United States District Judge Lawrence P. Zatkoff denied the Plaintiff’s motion to dismiss the charging document. 2013 WL 5719117. By then, a Fourth Superseding Indictment had charged the Plaintiff with six robbery counts and multiple firearm counts tied to robberies of Radio Shack and T-Mobile stores in Michigan and Ohio. Judge Zatkoff held that the indictment was legally sufficient because it tracked the statutory language, identified the dates and stores at issue, and adequately notified Carpenter of the charges even without spelling out every factual theory of aiding and abetting.
The case was later reassigned to United States District Judge Sean F. Cox for trial. On December 6, 2013, Judge Cox denied the Plaintiff’s and codefendant’s motion to suppress historical cell-site data and also allowed the government’s cell-site expert testimony. 2013 WL 6385838. The court reasoned that the government had obtained orders under the Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2703(d), and that Sixth Circuit law at the time—especially United States v. Skinner—did not recognize a Fourth Amendment privacy interest broad enough to require probable cause and a warrant for this type of cell-tower data. Judge Cox also said that, even if there were a constitutional problem, the agents had relied in good faith on the statute. That same opinion allowed the FBI expert to testify that the phones were in geographic areas consistent with the robbery locations, while making clear the testimony was about general areas rather than exact pinpointing.
The case then went to a joint jury trial. The government’s theory was that the Plaintiff was not necessarily the person entering the stores, but a planner, lookout, driver, or organizer in a robbery crew. At trial, the prosecution used cooperating witnesses and the cell-site evidence to place the Plaintiff’s phone near several robberies. On December 18, 2013, the jury found Carpenter not guilty on one firearm count and guilty on the remaining counts. After trial, the district court denied mistrial and new-trial requests on March 11, 2014. 2014 WL 943094. Judge Cox rejected the Plaintiff’s argument that he had been unfairly blocked from using an FBI report to undermine a cooperator’s testimony and also rejected the claim that conflicting defense strategies in the joint trial required a new trial. In 2014, the district court imposed a total sentence of 1,395 months’ imprisonment, which the later appellate decisions described as more than 100 years. 926 F.3d 313.
The Plaintiff appealed. On April 13, 2016, the Sixth Circuit affirmed the verdict. 819 F.3d 880. Judge Kethledge’s majority opinion treated the Cell-Site Location Information (“CSLI”) as business records held by wireless carriers rather than the content of private communications. Judge Kethledge applied the third-party doctrine suggested by SCOTUS in United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400. Because phone users convey routing-type information to carriers as part of using the network, the majority opinion concluded that obtaining those records under § 2703(d) was not a Fourth Amendment “search.” The court also rejected the Plaintiff’s other trial and sentencing arguments, including his venue challenge to the Ohio robbery counts, his evidentiary challenge concerning the FBI report used during cross-examination, and his Eighth Amendment challenge to the very long sentence. In concurrence, Judge Stranch agreed with affirming the conviction, but she warned that the majority treated CSLI too much like ordinary business records and did not take seriously enough how large amounts of location data can reveal a person’s movements over time. She suggested that this kind of long-term, aggregated tracking raised real Fourth Amendment concerns even if suppression was not warranted here because the government had relied in good faith on the law as it then existed.
On September 26, 2016, the Plaintiff petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari. The Supreme Court granted the petition on June 6, 2017. The case was argued on November 29, 2017. Counsel from the ACLU argued for the Plaintiff, and a then-Deputy Solicitor General argued for the United States. The oral argument centered on a basic clash of frames. Petitioner argued that the government’s collection of 127 days of CSLI was constitutionally different from the old third-party-record cases because long-term, aggregated location data reveals a person’s movements, associations, and private life in a way that earlier cases never confronted. The Plaintiff tried to cabin his theory to “longer-term” aggregations and told the Court it need not overrule Smith or Miller to rule for the Plaintiff. Respondent, by contrast, argued that the case was controlled by the traditional third-party doctrine because the relevant records were created and kept by the carriers for their own purposes and disclosed through lawful compulsory process rather than direct government tracking.
On June 22, 2018, the Supreme Court reversed and remanded. The Court held that the government’s acquisition of the Plaintiff’s historical CSLI from his wireless carriers was a Fourth Amendment search. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for a five-Justice majority, explained that CSLI was not just another ordinary business record: over time, it created a detailed, retrospective map of a person’s movements and could reveal the “privacies of life,” including where a person slept, worked, sought medical care, worshipped, or associated with others. The Court therefore declined to extend the traditional third-party doctrine from Smith and Miller to this new kind of digital surveillance, reasoning that cellphone users do not truly “voluntarily” share this information in any meaningful sense because phones generate location records automatically as a basic feature of modern life. Because the government had obtained Carpenter’s records under the Stored Communications Act’s lower “reasonable grounds” standard rather than a warrant supported by probable cause, the Court ruled that the search was unconstitutional and reversed the Sixth Circuit. The Court emphasized, however, that its decision was narrow and did not resolve questions about real-time CSLI, tower dumps, ordinary security cameras, or other business records that might incidentally reveal location information.
The dissents argued that the majority had broken sharply from existing precedent. Justice Kennedy, joined by Justices Thomas and Alito, maintained that CSLI should have been treated like other third-party business records because the carriers, not the Plaintiff, created, possessed, and controlled them; in his view, the government had merely used lawful compulsory process to obtain records from a company, not “searched” the Plaintiff himself. Justice Alito separately warned that the majority’s approach threatened to unsettle subpoena doctrine more broadly, while Justice Thomas criticized the Court’s reliance on “reasonable expectation of privacy” doctrine rather than property-based principles. Justice Gorsuch also dissented, but he suggested that future cases might recognize privacy protections through a revived property-based approach to digital data.
On remand, the Sixth Circuit again affirmed the conviction on June 11, 2019. 926 F.3d 313. Judge Stranch, writing this time for the panel, accepted that the government’s acquisition of the CSLI had violated the Fourth Amendment under the Supreme Court’s new rule. But the court held that the evidence still did not have to be suppressed because the FBI agents had acted in good-faith reliance on the Stored Communications Act and on then-existing law. The panel emphasized three things: the statute itself appeared to authorize the orders the government sought; two judicial officers had in fact issued those orders; and the constitutional defect was not clear until the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision. The remand opinion preserved Carpenter’s convictions even after the Supreme Court recognized a search.
After the June 2019 remand opinion, the Plaintiff sought rehearing, and the Sixth Circuit granted relief on sentencing grounds on December 19, 2019. 788 F. App’x 364. Sixth Circuit vacated his sentence and remanded so the district court could resentence him in light of Dean v. United States. On resentencing in 2022, the district court again imposed the same aggregate sentence—described by the Sixth Circuit as 116 years or 1,395 months. Carpenter appealed again, arguing that the First Step Act of 2018 should have reduced the stacked mandatory minimums under § 924(c). On May 2, 2023, the Sixth Circuit rejected that argument. The court reasoned that the Act was only partially retroactive and did not apply where, as here, a sentence had already been imposed before December 21, 2018, even though that sentence was later vacated and reimposed after that date. Relying on United States v. Jackson, the panel held Carpenter was “under sentence pending appeal” when the Act became law, so the older stacking rules still governed his resentencing.
On November 15, 2023, the Plaintiff filed a certiorari petition from the 2023 resentencing appeal, and the Supreme Court denied certiorari on February 20, 2024. On February 19, 2025, the Plaintiff moved to vacate his sentence under 28 U.S.C. 2255. On March 25, 2025, the Plaintiff’s case was reassigned to U.S. District Judge Jonathan J.C. Grey. The Plaintiff is scheduled to be resentenced on May 27, 2026.
As of April 21, 2026, the case is ongoing.
Summary Authors
Ruby Napora (4/17/2025)
Jacob Chang (4/21/2026)
People
For PACER's information on parties and their attorneys, see: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/29105797/parties/united-states-v-green/
Attorney, Daniel R.
Attorney, Kenneth Ray
(AUSA), Kenneth R. (Michigan)
Adams, Raymond (Michigan)
Beres, Martin J. (Michigan)
Documents in the Clearinghouse
Docket
See docket on RECAP: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/29105797/united-states-v-green/
Last updated July 28, 2026, 7 p.m.
Docket for: United States v. Green
Case Details
State / Territory:
Case Type(s):
Key Dates
Filing Date: April 4, 2012
Case Ongoing: Yes
Plaintiffs
Plaintiff Description:
Criminal case (no plaintiff)
Attorney Organizations:
Public Interest Lawyer: Yes
Filed Pro Se: No
Class Action Sought: No
Class Action Outcome: Not sought
Defendants
Private Entity/Person
Criminal Defendant
Defendant Type(s):
Facility Type(s):
Case Details
Constitutional Clause(s):
Unreasonable search and seizure
Other Dockets:
Eastern District of Michigan 2:12-cr-20218
Supreme Court of the United States 16-402
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit 22-01198
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit 14-01572
Special Case Type(s):
Available Documents:
U.S. Supreme Court merits opinion
Outcome
Prevailing Party: Defendant
Source of Relief:
Issues
General/Misc.:
Case Summary of Carpenter v. United States, Civil Rights Litig. Clearinghouse, https://clearinghouse.net/case/45826/ (last updated 4/21/2026).