Murder defendant Kaprise Sledge, accused in the March 2, 2024, shooting death of U.S. Postal Service carrier Jonte Davis in Warren, has filed three motions in U.S. District Court asking Judge Donald C. Nugent to suppress information related to the movement of cell phones possibly associated with the murder and other things.

The attorney for Kaprise Sledge, 25, filed the motion last month, citing flaws in the warrant that was used to secure the cellphone information, called historical “cell site location information,” CSLI for short.

The Granitdiscovery.com web site states that CSLI can provide a “record of where a phone has been based on its interactions with cellular networks. Every time your phone makes a call, sends a text or accesses data, it connects to the nearest cell tower, leaving behind a digital trail,” according to a February 2025 post.

“These interactions, logged by cellular providers, form a historical timeline that can be invaluable for reconstructing events and verifying claims about where someone — or at least their phone — was at a specific moment.”

It notes that CSLI “doesn’t provide “precise GPS coordinates, but it serves as a powerful tool to narrow down approximate locations and connect dots in criminal, civil, and missing persons investigations.”

CSLI was used in a trial in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, the murder trial of Mickele Glenn last month. Glenn was convicted of killing Ed Lewis at Lewis’ home on Oneta Avenue on Youngstown’s West Side. Glenn was sentenced to at least 29 years in prison.

During Glenn’s trial, Youngstown police detective George Anderson showed and discussed an illustration created for the trial showing the movement of Glenn’s cellphone on the day that police believe Lewis was killed in October of 2023. It showed that at about the time a witness believed the murder took place, Glenn’s cellphone was in the general area of Lewis’ home and then headed toward Struthers a short time later.

POSTAL KILLING

Kaprise Sledge is one of two men charged in federal court Davis’ death. The other is Thomas Sledge, 45, reportedly Kaprise’s father. Both men appear to be in federal custody. Davis was found shot to death near Washington and Olive Avenue NE in Warren.

They each face charges of murder of a federal employee and discharging a firearm during a violent crime. If convicted, both could receive life in prison. No decision has been announced by the government as to whether it will seek the death penalty.

Kaprise Sledge’s motion, filed by attorney William Norman, asks for suppression of the CSLI that was obtained as a result of a March 5, 2024, search warrant.

“The (search) warrant and (documents filed to obtain the search warrant) fails to establish particularized probable cause as required by the Fourth Amendment,” the filing states. The search warrant allowed an “impermissibly overbroad digital dragnet,” the filing argues.

The filing states that a lawful search warrant provides a “specific suspect” and needed to state that there was a “specific phone number or any observed use of a phone by (Kaprise Sledge) in connection with the offense.”

The warrant in this matter “authorized indiscriminate access to location and identification data from every cellular device present in a 150-mile radius of two locations during overlapping 30-minute intervals,” the filing states. “This is not a warrant founded on probable cause.”

The filing cited a ruling in a 2024 Texas case in which the Texas Court of Appeals reversed a conviction because the supporting affidavit lacked a “factual nexus between the device to be searched and any alleged criminal activity.” In the Sledge case, the affidavit failed to provide any “facts linking (Kaprise) Sledge’s phone to the homicide.”

Federal prosecutors have a deadline in early February to respond to the motion before a ruling is issued on whether to allow use of the CSLI in Kaprise Sledge’s trial.

ANOTHER MOTION

Kaprise Sledge’s attorney also filed a motion asking for suppression of evidence obtained through a search of Kaprise Sledge’s cell phones, saying the searches were a violation of Sledge’s Fourth Amendment rights against having his phones searched “without probable cause or exigent circumstances.”

The filing states that Kaprise Sledge was stopped in Warren for minor traffic violations — speeding and reckless operation — May 16, 2024.

In most situations, those offenses would result in a traffic citation and immediate release, but Sledge was arrested, “at which time his cell phones were seized as part of his property,” the filing states. He was told that “unless he agreed to cooperate in a homicide investigation, his phones would not be returned. When he declined, officers waited until May 17 — more than 24 hours — before seeking a warrant,” the filing states.

The affidavit in the case was “generic, citing no specific nexus between the phones and any crime, and no evidence suggesting Mr. Sledge had used those phones in connection with the alleged homicide,” the filing states.

It cited a 2017 Washington, D.C., ruling in which police arrested a suspect for a parole violation and seized his phone without a warrant and then obtained a warrant two days later. In that case, the court ruled that probable cause “to arrest a person will not itself justify a warrant to search his property. Regardless of whether an individual is validly suspected of committing a crime, an application for a search warrant concerning his property or possessions must demonstrate cause to believe that evidence is likely to be found at the place to be searched,” the filing states.

“Moreover, there must, of course, be a nexus between the item to be seized and criminal behavior.”

The Fourth Amendment protects persons, houses, papers, and effects from unreasonable searches and seizures, the filing states. “A cell phone is a protected effect.” It adds, “Here, officers had no warrant, no probable cause and no articulable exigency when they seized Mr. Sledge’s phones. There was no risk of flight, evidence of destruction or officer safety. The government cannot excuse the violation by saying it later applied for a warrant.”

The third area of information the defense has asked to suppress is the Automated License Plate Reader system used to obtain evidence against Kaprise Sledge. “The government accessed expansive ALPR databases and performed a search of Sledge’s recent vehicle movements without a warrant, judicial oversight or exigent circumstances,” the filing states.

The filing asks that all charges against Kaprise Sledge be dismissed because the information law enforcement obtained through use of the ALPR data “led to the indictment.”

The filing explains that the data obtained through cameras is “stored in massive databases that are accessible to federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, even where, as in this case, those agencies do not collect their own data or maintain their own databases. In many cases, this data is retained for more than five years, or even, in this case, indefinitely.”

The filing states that law enforcement’s use of ALPR in this instance “functioned as a virtual time machine capable of locating Sledge’s vehicle retrospectively and in fine detail. This capacity to reconstruct past movements without ever requesting a warrant constituted an unlawful search under the First Amendment.”