# United States v. Brown

> District Court, N.D. Illinois · July 15, 2025

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/11100637

## Case

- **Court:** District Court, N.D. Illinois
- **Decided:** July 15, 2025
- **Opinion:** 100trialcourt
- **Cited by:** 0 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/11100637

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- finding that a defendant's "own illegal acts after the initial [constitutional violation] trigger[s] an exception to the exclusionary rule" because the defendant's response "is itself a new, distinct crime" (citation and quotation marks omitted)
- finding that using "seven hours of GPS location data to determine an individual’s location (or a cell phone’s location) so long as the tracking does not reveal movements within the home (or hotel room

## Opinion text

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
WESTERN DIVISION

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, )
)
Plaintiff, )
)
vs. ) Case No. 23 C 50312
)
FLOYD BROWN, )
)
Defendant. )

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

MATTHEW F. KENNELLY, District Judge:
On April 8, 2022, after a two-week trial, a jury found Floyd Brown guilty of
second-degree murder of a federal officer under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1111 and 1114(1) and
various other related charges in the superseding indictment against him. On August 29,
2022, the Court sentenced Brown to a prison term of fifty-five years, followed by a five-
year term of supervised release. Brown did not appeal his conviction or sentence. On
August 28, 2023, Brown filed a pro se motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 to vacate, set
aside, or correct his sentence. He argues that his trial counsel's failure to file a motion
to suppress evidence amounted to ineffective assistance of counsel. For the following
reasons, the Court denies Brown's motion.
Background
The background of this case dates back to December 2018, when the
Bloomington, Illinois Police Department (BPD) was investigating a series of residential
burglaries. On December 23, 2018, BPD officers found Brown, whom they had
identified as their prime suspect, allegedly in the midst of another residential burglary.
Brown fled from the scene before BPD could arrest him.
On or about December 26, 2018, a McLean County Circuit Court judge issued an
arrest warrant for Brown on charges arising from three residential burglaries in

Bloomington. Five days later, the Illinois Department of Corrections also issued an
arrest warrant for Brown for violating the terms of his parole. Shortly after these arrest
warrants were issued, deputy U.S. marshals with the Great Lakes Regional Task Force
began working with local law enforcement to locate and detain Brown.
In January 2019, deputy marshals interviewed Brown's former girlfriend
(Individual A) for information on his whereabouts. Individual A informed them that she
and Brown were no longer in a relationship and that Brown had a new girlfriend, whom
she identified as "Dri." Individual A also identified a Facebook profile that she said was
used by "Dri," and she said that Brown and "Dri" were likely together. Law enforcement
subsequently identified "Dri" as Drianna Wright "based on a comparison of known

photographs of Wright with photographs posted on 'Dri's' Facebook account." Gov't's
Resp. to Def.'s § 2255 Mot. at 3.
Deputy marshals also searched for Brown at his son's residence in early January
2019. While there, they questioned the son about Brown's whereabouts and were
"advised that [Brown] and Wright had previously been staying with him and his
girlfriend, but that [Brown] and Wright had not been there in weeks." Id.
Based on this information, law enforcement expanded its search to include
Wright. On or about January 18, 2019, deputy marshals received information from
Amtrak that Wright had booked a bus trip from Rockford to Chicago, followed by a train
trip from Chicago to Springfield, for January 17, 2019 and a return trip for January 18,
2019. Records indicated, however, that Wright had not boarded the bus or the train.
Amtrak also provided the phone number and e-mail address used for the booking. This
phone number was 314-xxx-9123 (the -9123 phone).

On February 5, 2019, law enforcement obtained from a McLean County judge a
search warrant for "historical call, text, and data detail records and historical location
information for the -9123 phone." Id. Utilizing historical cell site location information
(CSLI) obtained via this warrant, law enforcement learned that the -9123 phone had
been pinging off cell towers located on the east side of Rockford. Call records from the
phone indicated calls made to a bus company, Amtrak, and multiple Rockford
businesses. Notably, the records showed two calls made to an 800-number for the
hotel brand Extended Stay America. The call records did not indicate that any other
hotels were contacted. These findings were compiled and discussed by law
enforcement on March 4, 2019.

On March 4, 2019, a McLean County judge issued a search warrant for "the
installation, use, and monitoring of a pen register and trap and trace device and the
obtaining of historical and prospective location information for the -9123 phone." Id. at
4–5. Law enforcement served the phone service provider with the warrant on March 5
and began receiving real-time location information and pen register and trap and trace
data around 7:00 p.m. that same evening. This information was consistent with location
information obtained from the February warrant; pings for the -9123 phone indicated
that it was located on the east side of Rockford near the I-90 interchange. Based on the
information obtained from the two warrants, law enforcement planned to search for
Brown at the Extended Stay America hotel in Rockford on the morning of March 7
"assuming that overnight ping data did not point in another direction." Id. at 5.
On the morning of March 7, 2019, updated information from the -9123 phone
showed that it was still in the same area as the night before. Law enforcement traveled

to Rockford and, in particular, to the Extended Stay America hotel there. Once they
arrived at the hotel, law enforcement spoke with the hotel's general manager at the front
desk. The hotel maintenance engineer joined the conversation, and both he and the
general manager identified Wright, based on photographs, as a guest staying in Room
305. The hotel manager stated that "Wright had come to the front desk a few minutes
earlier to pay for an additional week." Id. at 6. The hotel manager also told law
enforcement that Wright had been staying at the hotel since December 2018 and that a
male was staying with her. The maintenance engineer described a car he believed
belonged to Wright and the unknown male, and he told law enforcement where the car
was typically parked in the hotel's parking lot.

At approximately 8:40 a.m., law enforcement mobilized to secure the area. See
Def.'s Reply to Gov't's Resp. to § 2255 Mot., Ex. H-7 at 3 (FBI interview of Deputy U.S.
Marshal Michael Flannery). Officers set up exterior surveillance positions surrounding
the hotel, including placing an officer near the vehicle identified by the maintenance
engineer as belonging to Wright. At the same time, the maintenance engineer "agreed
to conduct a ruse visit to Room 305 to determine whether the male was in the room at
the time." Gov't's Resp. to Def.'s § 2255 Mot. at 6. As part of this ruse visit, the
maintenance engineer knocked on Room 305, and Wright allowed him to enter. The
maintenance engineer exited the room and confirmed to law enforcement that "a male
was lying on the bed" but stated that he could not see the man's face to positively
identify whether he was Floyd Brown. Id.
Deputy marshals then prepared to enter Room 305 and arrest Brown. Three
deputy marshals approached the room with a battering ram, knocked, and announced

themselves as U.S. Marshals with a warrant for Brown's arrest. A deputy marshal used
a master key obtained from the hotel manager to open the door. The door did not open
fully because the swing lock was engaged. But before any further steps could be taken,
Brown began firing a gun at officers from inside the hotel room. Brown fired multiple
shots before jumping out the hotel room's third-story window toward the parking lot. As
Brown fled through the parking lot, he shot and killed Special Deputy Marshal Jacob
Keltner, "who had been occupying an exterior surveillance position near the hotel's
northeast side between Room 305 and defendant's vehicle." Id. at 7. Brown then left
the scene in his vehicle.
Just before 11:00 a.m., Illinois State Police spotted Brown on highway I-39. A

high-speed chase ensued, ending with Brown crashing his car in a field and engaging in
an hours-long stand-off with law enforcement. Eventually, Brown surrendered and was
taken into custody.
As Brown was being pursued and apprehended, law enforcement was working to
secure the scene at the Extended Stay hotel. During the initial shooting, a round fired
by Brown had struck Wright, who was standing near the hotel room door at the time.
Wright indicated to law enforcement that she had been shot, and emergency services
were called to the scene.
According to Brown, law enforcement made three entries into the hotel room
after the initial entry. First, they entered to render aid to Wright and evacuate her from
the room. Second, they entered to conduct a protective sweep, which involved opening
the closet. Third, law enforcement entered the room and recovered various items that
they had seen during the protective sweep. Based on officers' reports, the first two

entries occurred more or less simultaneously; according to Rockford police officer
Joseph Stevens, a SWAT team entered the room first to extract Wright, and he then
"entered the room behind the SWAT team." Def.'s Reply to Gov't's Resp. to § 2255
Mot., Ex. H-11 at 5; see also id., Ex. H-9 at 2 (Rockford Police Department report of
officer Robert Reffett stating that "[t]he Illinois State Police SWAT team breached the
door to the suspects [sic] room and removed the female," then they "cleared the
suspects [sic] room and determined nobody else was inside."). During the protective
sweep, Stevens says, he saw spent shell casings on the floor, drops of blood, a laptop
computer, and "numerous items laying [sic] in the closet." Id., Ex. H-11 at 5. Though
the exact time of these first two entries is not stated in police reports, Stevens' report

indicates that he remained in Room 305 to secure the room until he was relieved by
other officers at 11:30 a.m. Id., Ex. H-11 at 5–6.
At approximately 6:20 p.m. on March 7, a federal magistrate judge issued a
warrant to search Rooms 305, 306, and 307, as well as the common areas of the
Extended Stay hotel. Law enforcement recovered the following evidence from Room
305: "two loaded handguns with obliterated serial numbers, several loaded firearm
magazines, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, a ballistic vest, and three electronic
devices, namely, defendant's cell phone, computer, and PlayStation console." Id. at 7–
8. A search pursuant to a subsequent warrant authorizing law enforcement to search
the three electronic devices uncovered "additional evidence relating to, among other
things, defendant's knowledge, intent, planning and premeditation, and possession of
the weapons." Id. at 8. A search of the cell phone recovered at the scene confirmed it
was assigned the -9123 phone number that had initially led law enforcement to the

Extended Stay hotel.
On March 8, law enforcement obtained a warrant to search Brown's vehicle.
Officers recovered "two rifles with obliterated serial numbers, one of which was later
connected to spent shell casings found at the Extended Stay hotel, and nearly 1,000
rounds of additional ammunition." Id.
A grand jury indicted Brown on multiple charges, including first-degree murder in
violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1114(1) and 1111. Through counsel, he filed several pre-trial
motions, including a motion seeking a hearing under Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154
(1978), to challenge the veracity of facts used to support the March 4, 2019 search
warrant. This Court denied Brown's motion for a Franks hearing, finding that he failed to

show any of the challenged statements were materially false. The Court alternatively
ruled, among other things, that Brown's commission of a new offense—the March 7
shooting and homicide—was an intervening circumstance that dissipated any taint of
illegality that might be claimed to arise from allegedly false statements in the warrant
application.
Brown's jury trial began on March 28, 2022, and on April 8, 2022, the jury
returned a verdict finding him guilty of second-degree murder and the other charges in
the superseding indictment—aside from first-degree murder, on which the jury acquitted
Brown. On August 9, 2022, the Court denied Brown's motion for a new trial and, on
August 29, the Court sentenced him to a prison term of fifty-five years. On September
6, 2022, this Court entered the judgment of conviction against Brown. Brown did not
appeal his conviction or sentence.
On August 28, 2023, Brown filed the present motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. In

his motion, Brown contends that he received ineffective assistance of counsel because
his attorneys failed to file a motion to suppress evidence that he contends was obtained
from the tracking of his cellular phone. In his reply brief, Brown appears to separately
contend that law enforcement's entry into and search(es) of the Extended Stay hotel
room after the shooting violated the Fourth Amendment and that law enforcement
violated Illinois law in obtaining cell site location information. See Def.'s Reply to Gov't's
Resp. at 6–11. Brown appears to be adding these contentions to his claim of ineffective
assistance involving counsel's failure to file a motion to suppress, though it is also
possible that he is challenging the entry and search(es) directly, not filtered through an
ineffective assistance claim.1

Discussion
A court may grant relief from a federal sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 if "the
sentence was imposed in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States,"

1 If Brown is challenging the searches directly, rather than through his ineffective
assistance of counsel claim, any such challenge is barred as untimely. An issue is
waived if it could have been raised in an opening brief but was not. See Qualls v.
United States, 774 F.2d 850, 851 (7th Cir. 1985) ("[P]etitioner did not raise this issue
before the district court in either petition for section 2255 relief. Accordingly, defendant
has waived the issue for appeal."); Bourgeois v. Watson, 977 F.3d 620, 629–31 (7th Cir.
2020) (analyzing issue of waiver in the context of a petition for section 2255 relief); see
also Wood v. Milyard, 566 U.S. 463, 474 (2012) (applying the waiver doctrine in the
context of a state prisoner's habeas corpus petition); Palmer v. Marion County, 327 F.3d
588, 597–98 (7th Cir. 2003) (collecting cases regarding waiver in the context of
summary judgment).
among other reasons. 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Generally, claims not brought on direct
appeal may not be raised for the first time on collateral review "unless the petitioner
shows cause and prejudice." Massaro v. United States, 538 U.S. 500, 504 (2003).
Claims for ineffective assistance of counsel, however, "may be brought in a collateral

proceeding under § 2255, whether or not the petitioner could have raised the claim on
direct appeal." Id.
A. Ineffective assistance of counsel
The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to counsel in all criminal proceedings
"in order to protect the fundamental right to a fair trial." Strickland v. Washington, 466
U.S. 668, 684 (1984). Included in the right to counsel "is the right to the effective
assistance of counsel." Id. at 686 (quoting McMann v. Richardson, 397 U.S. 759, 771,
n.14 (1970)). To successfully maintain an ineffective assistance of counsel claim, a
criminal defendant must show two things: (1) "that counsel's performance was
deficient," and (2) "that the deficient performance prejudiced the defense." Id. at 687.

Failure to establish either element defeats a movant's claim. See Dunn v. Jess, 981
F.3d 582, 591 (7th Cir. 2020).
When a defendant premises an ineffective assistance of counsel claim on
defense counsel's failure to litigate a Fourth Amendment claim competently, to establish
prejudice the movant "must . . . prove that his Fourth Amendment claim is meritorious
and that there is a reasonable probability that the verdict would have been different
absent the excludable evidence . . . ." Kimmelman v. Morrison, 477 U.S. 365, 375
(1986). A reasonable probability is "a probability sufficient to undermine confidence in
the outcome." Strickland, 466 U.S. at 694. The movant is not required to show that
counsel's conduct "more likely than not altered the outcome in the case," id. at 693, but
the "likelihood of a different result must be substantial, not just conceivable." Harrington
v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 112 (2011).
The Court will begin by addressing whether the motion to suppress that Brown

contends his counsel should have filed would have been meritorious such that the
outcome of his trial would have been different. See Strickland, 466 U.S. at 697 ("[A]
court need not determine whether counsel's performance was deficient before
examining the prejudice suffered by the defendant as a result of the alleged
deficiencies.").
1. Prejudice from failure to file motion to suppress
Brown's contentions in his section 2255 motion regarding violations of the Fourth
Amendment (and counsel's ineffectiveness for failure to challenge those violations) are
not crystal clear, but he appears to argue that: (1) there actually was no warrant issued
on March 4; (2) even if there was a warrant, law enforcement obtained and used

information predating the warrant, and this was improper; and (perhaps) (3) the warrant
did not authorize law enforcement to obtain the information that it used to locate him at
the Extended Stay hotel. See Def.'s § 2255 Mot. at 22.
The Court will address all of those points, but it begins in another place. Brown's
foundational contention is that the government did not properly obtain the geolocation
evidence that it used to find him at the Extended Stay hotel. The problem with this is
that a motion seeking to suppress evidence on that basis would not have gotten Brown
anywhere. The government did not offer any geolocation information at trial. It didn't
need to. The story for purposes of the trial effectively started once Brown had been
located at the hotel, not before. Thus there was no need for the government to
introduce the geolocation information. And as indicated, it did not introduce any such
information.
What the government found via the geolocation evidence was Brown himself.

But even if law enforcement came about Brown's location improperly, he would not have
been entitled to suppression of his identity, or his body. He cites no law suggesting this,
and in fact the law is exactly to the contrary. "The body or identity of a defendant . . . is
never itself suppressible as a fruit of an unlawful arrest, even if it conceded that an
unlawful arrest, search, or interrogation occurred." United States v. Chagoya-Morales,
859 F.3d 411, 415 (7th Cir. 2017) (quoting INS v. Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U.S. 1032, 1039
(1984)).
Brown appears to contend that all of the information that law enforcement
recovered from his hotel room (and perhaps elsewhere) after it located him there
constituted fruits of the poisonous tree that should have been suppressed if the March 4

warrant was not properly issued. If that is Brown's contention, it is incorrect. The
crimes that Brown committed when law enforcement encountered him at the Extended
Stay hotel amounted to intervening circumstances that broke any causal connection
between the March 4 warrant and the information seized after the shooting took place.
See United States v. Sprinkle, 106 F.3d 613, 619 (4th Cir. 1997); id. at 619 n.4
(collecting cases). The Court so ruled, in fact, in connection with a separate motion that
trial counsel did file, in which they sought a Franks hearing regarding the issuance of
the March 4 warrant.
For these reasons, a motion to suppress the fruits of the March 4 warrant would
have gotten Brown nowhere. He therefore suffered no cognizable prejudice from trial
counsel's failure to file the motion. As a result, his claim of ineffective assistance of
counsel fails.
The Court will nonetheless address the other contentions that Brown makes

regarding the warrant to ensure a complete record in the event of an appeal.
Brown appears to contend that if his attorneys had filed a motion to suppress,
"the Court would have heard evidence that there wasn't a warrant authorizing the use of
geofencing/geotracking and, that there was [sic] warrantless searches to Room 305."
Def.'s Reply to Gov't's Resp. to § 2255 Mot. at 1. More specifically, Brown says that:
No warrant authorized law enforcement to use geofencing/geotracking to
ping Mr. Brown's cell phone to reveal his location. As a result, law
enforcement obtained Mr. Brown's GPS location as early as March 1,
2019[,] in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights, and all the evidence
obtained as a result of that illegal search and seizure, including evidence
obtained through the search warrants for Mr. Brown's hotel room and car is
fruit of the poisonous tree, and should be suppressed.

Def.'s § 2255 Mot. at 37. Brown says that, when reviewing the electronic tracking data
used to locate him in Rockford, he found maps that he believes show that law
enforcement used geofencing to track his cell phone's location. See id., Exs. A–B.
According to Brown, the warrants did not permit geofencing. Brown also contends that
law enforcement used location data from prior to March 4, 2019, the date the warrant
was obtained. Based on these contentions, Brown argues that the resulting search(es)
of his hotel room was illegal and that all evidence obtained from the hotel room should
be suppressed.
Brown's characterizations of the March 4, 2019 search warrant and the methods
law enforcement used to locate him in Rockford are not supported by the record.
Starting with the March 4 warrant, it authorized law enforcement to collect, among other
things, the following information:
Cell site activations; . . . [w]ire, electronic, cellular data, and all other dialing,
routing, addressing and signaling information initiated from and received by
the [-9123 phone], but not including the content of any communications; . . .
[and] twenty-four hour a day assistance to include switch based solutions
including precision location based information queries, per-call
measurement data (PCMD), range-to-tower (RTT), Network Event Location
System/NELOS, GPS/E911, and all reasonable assistance to permit the
aforementioned agencies to triangulate the historic, current, and
ongoing/prospective/real-time location of the target telephone.

Application/Warrant at 4, United States v. Brown, No. 19-cr-50016 (N.D. Ill. June 15,
2021), ECF No. 175-1. The March 4 warrant applied to the above information "for the
period of sixty (60) days prior continuing through sixty (60) days from the date of this
Order." Id. (emphasis added). In short, the plain language of the warrant: (a)
authorized law enforcement to use geotracking to locate Brown's phone going forward
from March 4, 2019; and (b) permitted the collection of historic cell site location
information, going back sixty days—in other words back to January 3, 2019.
For these reasons, Brown is incorrect that law enforcement exceeded the scope of the
warrant to locate him in Rockford.
As the search warrant specifically permitted, law enforcement obtained
information that tracked the cell site activation of Brown's phone, and then it mapped out
the radius of the two cell towers on which his phone had recently pinged, and inferred
that Brown was likely in the area where the two radii overlapped because the hotel that
the -9123 phone called—the Extended Stay America—was also in that same area. In
sum, law enforcement did not obtain anything that the warrant did not permit it to obtain.
Brown also appears to contend that a hearing on a motion to suppress would
have brought to light evidence that the March 4 warrant did not actually exist at the time
law enforcement began to track the -9123 phone. To support this contention, Brown
points to statements made by various law enforcement officials before the March 7 entry
into his hotel room. One such e-mail, sent on March 5 at 9:28 a.m. from BPD officer

Tom Rena, states that "[a]ttached is the phone number that Drianna Wright gave to
AMTRAK. There are several calls that makes [sic] me believe that she is using this
phone." Def.'s § 2255 Mot., Ex. G. Rena then asks, "Can we go up on it?" Id. In
response to that e-mail, Deputy Marshal Craig Kmett sent an e-mail to Deputy Marshal
Frederick Freeman on March 5 at 10:47 a.m. stating that "[t]hey think they have a good
# for Floyd Brown's girlfriend. Everyone interviewed says Floyd and her are together in
the Rockford area." Id. Kmett then asks, "Let me know if they can get Order on her
phone (Verizon)." Id.
Brown contends that these statements indicate that law enforcement did not
actually have a warrant as of March 5. Specifically, he contends that Rena asking

"[c]an we go up on it" and Kmett's subsequent request to "[l]et me know if they can get
Order on her phone" "would lead a reasonable person to believe that there was no
warrant for the -9123 phone as of March 5, 2019." Id. at 27. That's a non sequitur.
There are all sorts of better explanations for this that are consistent with the warrant
actually having been issued on March 4, the date that it bears on its face. Perhaps the
simplest is that the officers who wrote these emails were not completely in the loop.
The Court also notes that, as indicated earlier, even though the warrant was signed and
issued on March 4, it was not served on the cell phone service provider until March 5,
the same date as the two emails, and law enforcement did not start getting data until
7:00 p.m. that evening. Viewed in this context, the emails that Brown cites are not
evidence of a rogue operation to obtain cell site location information without a warrant;
rather, they represent human participants catching up with the unfolding events.
In sum, any contention by defense counsel that there was no warrant at the

relevant time would have been meritless.
Brown also contends that law enforcement used cell site information predating
the March 4 warrant and that this is further evidence of an illegal search. Again, not so.
As the Court has discussed, the March 4 warrant enabled law enforcement to get both
historical information (going back in time) and real-time information (going forward in
time).
For all of these reasons, any motion filed by counsel arguing that the location
data obtained by law enforcement was the product of an unconstitutional search would
have failed. In Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018), the Supreme Court
held that "the Government must generally obtain a warrant supported by probable

cause before acquiring [historical CSLI]." Id. at 316. In Brown's case, the government
did that: the warrant was properly supported, and it plainly authorized law enforcement
to obtain information going back sixty days and going forward sixty days. As such,
Brown's Fourth Amendment rights were not violated when law enforcement obtained
and used cell site location information to find him.
The Court also notes that under controlling Seventh Circuit authority, the
obtaining of real-time location data to locate Brown did not constitute a search within the
meaning of the Fourth Amendment. See United States v. Hammond, 996 F.3d 374, 387
(7th Cir. 2021). In Hammond, the Seventh Circuit found that use of real-time location
data for a limited period of time is not a search when the location data "does not provide
a 'window into [the] persons' life, revealing . . . his familial, political, professional,
religious, and sexual associations' to the same, intrusive degree as the collection of
historical CSLI." Id. at 389 (quoting Carpenter, 585 U.S. at 311). In the present case,

law enforcement tracked Brown's real-time CSLI for "approximately 38 hours: from
around 7:00 p.m. on March 5, 2019, until the morning of March 7, 2019." Gov't's Resp.
to Def.'s § 2255 Mot. at 18. Further, the pings used to track Brown's real-time
movements provided only a general location, as each cell tower's location radius ranged
from about 0.8 miles to about 1.5 miles. As such, the pings were not precise enough to
show Brown's movements within a private space. See United States v. Riley, 858 F.3d
1012, 1018 (6th Cir. 2017) (finding that using "seven hours of GPS location data to
determine an individual’s location (or a cell phone’s location) so long as the tracking
does not reveal movements within the home (or hotel room), does not cross the sacred
threshold of the home, and thus cannot amount to a Fourth Amendment search"). In

short, the privacy interest at the core of the Supreme Court's analysis in Carpenter has
no bearing here; rather, Hammond indicates that law enforcement's use of Brown's real-
time CSLI to locate him in Rockford did not amount to a search under the Fourth
Amendment.
To sum up: even if use of real-time CSLI did constitute a search under the
Fourth Amendment, law enforcement had a properly-obtained warrant allowing it to
gather that information. Brown's contention that his Fourth Amendment rights were
violated when law enforcement used both historical and real-time location data to locate
him in Rockford is not persuasive. Any motion to suppress evidence stemming from the
March 4 warrant would have lacked merit. Thus Brown cannot establish that he was
prejudiced by counsel's claimed ineffective assistance in failing to file such a motion. As
a result, his ineffective assistance claim fails.
2. Entries into the Extended Stay America hotel room

In his reply brief, Brown contends that a motion to suppress would have brought
to light facts regarding what he contends were illegal entries by law enforcement into
the Extended Stay hotel room. This contention is waived, or forfeited, as Brown did not
raise it in his section 2255 motion. See Qualls, 774 F.2d at 851; Palmer, 327 F.3d at
597–98. The Court nonetheless considers the point to ensure a complete record in the
event of an appeal.
As indicated earlier, law enforcement obtained a master key from the hotel's
general manager and used it to open the door to Brown's hotel room. Though law
enforcement had a warrant to arrest Brown, there was no search warrant for the hotel
room. Brown argues that the entry or entries into his hotel room without a warrant ran

afoul of the Fourth Amendment. Thus, he contends, all evidence obtained from the
hotel room should have been suppressed. Accordingly, Brown argues that, by not filing
a motion to suppress based on these illegal entries, his counsel provided ineffective
assistance.
To support this position, Brown cites to Steagald v. United States, 451 U.S. 204
(1981). In Steagald, the Supreme Court addressed "whether, under the Fourth
Amendment, a law enforcement officer may legally search for the subject of an arrest
warrant in the home of a third party without first obtaining a search warrant." 451 U.S.
at 205. The Court in Steagald held that law enforcement must obtain a search warrant
to effectuate an arrest—even an arrest supported by a valid warrant—if that arrest
involves entering the home of a third party. Id. at 205–06. Further, the Fourth
Amendment extends beyond the home to include hotel rooms. See Stoner v. California,
376 U.S. 483, 490 (1964) ("No less than a tenant of a house, or the occupant of a room

in a boarding house, . . . a guest in a hotel room is entitled to constitutional protection
against unreasonable searches and seizures." (internal citation omitted)). Brown
contends that he had a legitimate expectation of privacy in Room 305 and that, based
on Steagald, officers could not "enter [the] hotel room to arrest an occupant that is the
subject of an arrest warrant"—i.e., Brown himself—because they did not also have a
search warrant for that hotel room. See Def.'s Reply to Gov't's Resp. to § 2255 Mot. at
8.
This argument lacks merit. First and foremost, Brown's reliance on Steagald is
not persuasive. We are not talking here about the search of a third party's home (or
hotel room), as was the case in Steagald; Brown asserts that Room 305 was his hotel

room. See id. at 7–8. For this reason, Steagald is inapposite. In Steagald, police
officers entered Gary Steagald's home to execute an arrest warrant for Richard Lyons.
Steagald, 451 U.S. at 206. During an unsuccessful search for Lyons in Steagald's
home, officers discovered contraband, which led them to obtain a search warrant for
Steagald's home and, ultimately, file criminal drug charges against Steagald. Id. at
206–07. Steagald challenged law enforcement's initial entry into his home without a
search warrant. The Supreme Court concluded that although law enforcement's arrest
warrant for Lyons permitted them to "arrest Lyons in a public place or in his home," id.
at 213 (emphasis added), it did not permit them to arrest Lyons in Steagald's home.
This case is different. Brown was not arrested in someone else's home (or hotel
room); as indicated, he says it was his hotel room. Thus what happened here is that
law enforcement, armed with a warrant for Brown's arrest, entered his "home" to arrest
him. That did not run afoul of Steagald, and it did not violate the Fourth Amendment.

The arrest warrant for Brown permitted entry into his home (here, his hotel room) to
arrest him, at least if there was probable cause to believe he was there—as there quite
plainly was. A separate search warrant was not needed to enter Brown's hotel room.
See Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 602–03 (1980) ("[F]or Fourth Amendment
purposes, an arrest warrant founded on probable cause implicitly carries with it the
limited authority to enter a dwelling in which the suspect lives when there is reason to
believe the suspect is within.").
Were Brown now to switch gears and suggest that it was not his hotel room and
that he was merely Wright's guest, that would not improve his chances. Though that
scenario might make Steagald applicable, the person in Steagald whose Fourth

Amendment rights were violated was Steagald, the home's owner, not Lyons, the
assumed guest. "[O]ne who seeks to challenge the legality of a search as the basis for
suppressing relevant evidence [is required to allege] . . . that he himself was the victim
of an invasion of privacy." Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 261 (1960). Thus if
the hotel room was Wright's, it was her Fourth Amendment rights, not Brown's, that
were implicated by law enforcement's entry. This is beside the point, however, as
Brown repeatedly states that law enforcement violated his Fourth Amendment rights
when they entered his hotel room.
This covers law enforcement's initial entry into the hotel room. Brown—again,
only in his reply—also challenges later entries to the room in which evidence was seen
and ultimately seized. This argument is forfeited or waived for the same reasons
previously discussed. That aside, any such contention by his counsel would have
failed, for two reasons.

The first is one the Court has already referenced, specifically, the attenuation
doctrine. "Evidence is admissible when the connection between unconstitutional police
conduct and the evidence is remote or has been interrupted by some intervening
circumstance, so that the interest protected by the constitutional guarantee that has
been violated would not be served by suppression of the evidence obtained." Utah v.
Strieff, 579 U.S. 232, 238 (2016) (citation and quotation marks omitted). Courts
consider three factors to determine whether evidence has become attenuated from the
constitutional violation such that it may be admissible: (1) the "temporal proximity
between the unconstitutional conduct and the discovery of evidence to determine how
closely the discovery of evidence followed the unconstitutional search"; (2) "the

presence of intervening circumstances"; and (3) "the purpose and flagrancy of the
official misconduct." Id. at 239.
In this case, as the Court has stated (and as it ruled in connection with trial
counsel's Franks motion), the attenuation doctrine applies. The temporal proximity
factor does not cut in favor of attenuation "unless 'substantial time' elapses between an
unlawful act and when the evidence is obtained." Id. (citation omitted). Here, not much
time passed between law enforcement's initial entry and the seizure of evidence from
Room 305.
But although the time differential is relatively short, there were significant
intervening circumstances, which would weigh strongly against suppressing evidence
obtained from the hotel room: Brown's shooting at the deputy marshals and his flight
from the scene. See Sprinkle, 106 F.3d at 619 (finding that a defendant's "own illegal
acts after the initial [constitutional violation] trigger[s] an exception to the exclusionary

rule" because the defendant's response "is itself a new, distinct crime" (citation and
quotation marks omitted)). In addition, based on Brown's conduct of shooting at officers
and then fleeing from the scene—a shooting which resulted in the death of officer
Keltner—law enforcement obtained a warrant to search Room 305. "[T]he existence of
a valid warrant favors finding that the connection between unlawful conduct and the
discovery of evidence is sufficiently attenuated to dissipate the taint." Strieff, 579 U.S.
at 240. Therefore, the second factor favors the government.
Finally, there is nothing approaching "flagrant" misconduct here. Even if one
assumes—contrary to the Court's conclusion—that the first entry into the room was
improper, the second and third entries were fully and independently justified. When law

enforcement entered the hotel room to remove Wright, that was fully permissible
(irrespective of any justification for the initial entry) based on exigent circumstances.
See Hammond, 996 F.3d at 384 ("One well-recognized exception [to the search warrant
requirement] applies when 'the exigencies of the situation make the needs of law
enforcement so compelling that a warrantless search is objectively reasonable under
the Fourth Amendment.'" (quoting Kentucky v. King, 563 U.S. 452, 460 (2011)).
Specifically, the need for emergency aid for Wright, an injured occupant of the room,
amounted to an exigent circumstance that permitted entry without a warrant. See King,
563 U.S. at 460. And when law enforcement then reentered the room (or expanded the
scope of its initial entry), that was a justified "protective sweep"—"a quick and limited
search of the premises, incident to an arrest," in order to conduct "a cursory visual
inspection of those places in which a person might be hiding." Maryland v. Buie, 494
U.S. 325, 327 (1990).

Brown does not challenge the proposition that exigent circumstances existed
allowing law enforcement to enter the hotel room without a warrant to remove Wright
and conduct a protective sweep. Rather, he argues only that "the third entry into the
room by Rockford Police was illegal and thus, violated the defendant's Fourth
Amendment rights." Def.'s Reply to Gov't's Resp. to § 2255 Mot. at 10. This argument
fails. Brown concedes that "the items [in the hotel room] were finally seized pursuant to
a warrant." Id. at 11. Law enforcement initially identified the items later recovered from
the hotel room because they were in plain view during the protective sweep. "The
Fourth Amendment protection of the home has never been extended to require law
enforcement officers to shield their eyes" and ignore evidence in plain view. California

v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207, 213 (1986). And law enforcement did not simply take the
items then; rather it obtained a search warrant allowing their seizure.
For these reasons, Brown has identified no viable basis for suppression of any
material that was seized from the hotel room. Any motion to suppress would have
lacked merit.
3. Claimed "seizure" of cell phone
As a final matter, Brown contends that law enforcement illegally seized his phone
when it "commandeered [his] cell phone to reveal his GPS location." Def.'s § 2255 Mot.
at 36. According to Brown, "[l]aw enforcement thus converted [his] cell phone into a
tracking device, much like the tracking device in [United States v. Jones], by trespassing
onto his cell phone." Id. This argument is unpersuasive for several reasons, the most
obvious being that in United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012), the Supreme Court
based its holding on the fact that "[t]he Government physically occupied private property

for the purpose of obtaining information." Id. at 404 (emphasis added). The Court in
Jones noted the history of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, relying on principles based
in common law trespass, when it found that there would be "no doubt that such a
physical intrusion would have been considered a 'search' within the meaning of the
Fourth Amendment." Id. at 404–05 (emphasis added) (citation omitted). The Court
explained that "for most of our history the Fourth Amendment was understood to
embody a particular concern for government trespass upon the areas ('persons,
houses, papers, and effects') it enumerates." Id. at 406. Accordingly, the fact that law
enforcement physically attached a tracking device to Jones's car—one of his effects—
was central to the Court's finding that a search had occurred. Id. at 404 ("It is beyond

dispute that a vehicle is an 'effect' as that term is used in the [Fourth] Amendment.").
The Court in Jones expressly did not consider the argument raised by Brown: "It may
be that [tracking a suspect's movement for an extended period of time] through
electronic means, without an accompanying trespass, is an unconstitutional invasion of
privacy, but the present case does not require us to answer that question." Id. at 412.
Brown's argument that law enforcement seized his cell phone when it began
tracking his CSLI data is unpersuasive for another reason: it did not meaningfully
interfere with Brown's possessory interest in his cell phone. See United States v.
Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113 (1984). Brown does not contend that he was unable to
use his cell phone or that law enforcement otherwise limited the cell phone's
functionality. Accordingly, the Court finds that law enforcement did not seize Brown's
phone within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when it used CLSI data from the
phone to track and locate Brown in Rockford.

In sum, Brown has failed to show that any motion to suppress evidence based on
alleged Fourth Amendment violations would have had a reasonable chance of
succeeding. Therefore, it is unnecessary to determine whether his lawyers' failure to file
such a motion fell below an objective standard of reasonableness. See Dunn, 981 F.3d
at 591.
B. State law claim
In his reply, Brown contends for the first time that the government violated Illinois
state law when it sought location information for the -9123 phone. According to Brown,
law enforcement was under the belief that the -9123 phone belonged to Wright at the
time it applied for the search warrant. Brown contends that law enforcement violated

the Illinois Freedom from Location Surveillance Act, 725 ILCS 168/10, by obtaining
location information for the -9123 phone. This provision states, in relevant part:
[A] law enforcement agency shall not obtain location information pertaining
to a person or his or her effects without first obtaining a court order . . .
based on probable cause to believe that the person whose location
information is sought has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a
crime or the effect if evidence of a crime, or if the location information is
authorized under an arrest warrant . . . to aid in the apprehension or the
arrest of the person named in the arrest warrant.

725 ILCS 168/10. According to Brown, police did not have probable cause to believe
that Wright—who, based on the information from Amtrak, appeared to be the registered
owner of the -9123 phone—was suspected of committing any crime or that the phone
was evidence of a crime. As noted, Brown makes this claim for the first time in his
reply. Therefore, the Court finds that Brown has waived the claim. See Palmer, 327
F.3d at 597-98 (collecting cases).
Waiver aside, a state-law violation would not entitle Brown to relief under section
2255 in any event. Section 2255, by its terms, requires a showing that the defendant's
conviction was procured or his sentence was imposed "in violation of the Constitution or
laws of the United States." 28 U.S.C. § 2255(a); see also United States v. Addonizio,
442 U.S. 178, 186 (finding that a motion brought under section 2255 must allege either
a constitutional violation, that the sentence imposed was beyond the statutory limit, or
that the proceeding was infected in an "error of fact or law of the ‘fundamental’ character
that renders the entire proceeding irregular and invalid"). Brown's contention that law
enforcement allegedly violated an Illinois statute is not cognizable under section 2255.
Conclusion
For the reasons stated above, the Court denies Brown's motion under 28 U.S.C.
§ 2255 [dkt. 1]. Brown's earlier-filed motions for extension of time were ruled upon and
are terminated as moot [dkt. 21, 22]. The Clerk is directed to enter judgment stating:
Floyd Brown's motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 is denied. The Court also declines to
issue a certificate of appealability, as the Court can find nothing to suggest that the
merits of the claims that were rejected are debatable, capable of different resolution, or
deserving of further consideration. See 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(2); Barefoot v. Estelle, 463
U.S. 880, 893 n.4 (1983); Porter v. Gramley, 121 F.3d 1308, 1312 (7th Cir. 1997).
Date: July 15, 2025

United States District Judge

25

---

Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/11100637. Public record. Not legal advice.