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With the federal murder trial of Kaprise and Thomas Sledge now 10 days away in the March 2, 2024, shooting death of U.S. Postal Service carrier Jonte Davis, 33, in Warren, U.S. District Court Judge Donald C. Nugent has denied several defense motions.
The rulings were filed Wednesday after a motion hearing took place in federal court in Cleveland. Also at the hearing, both defendants were arraigned on a superseding indictment that modified the weapons charge both men face. Both men entered not guilty pleas. Their trial is set for Aug. 17.
The weapons charge -- now called using, carrying and discharging a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence -- could result in a longer prison sentence if convicted than under the previous charge. The former charge was called use of a firearm in furtherance of crime of violence. Their primary charge is murder of an officer and employee of the United States.
DENIED MOTIONS
One of the denied defense motions was one filed in March asking that the government turn over information it has on confidential informants or cooperative witnesses.
Another denied defense motion was a request for prosecutors to turn over information in their possession that might bear upon the defendants' past history. Federal law permits certain types of evidence to be presented that talks about a defendant's prior history of other crimes, wrongs or acts, but not such evidence that suggests a defendant has a "propensity" toward improper conduct."
In both rulings, no document was provided on the court website explaining the reason other than calling the issues "moot."
NO RULINGS YET
The judge has not yet ruled on many other motions, such as ones asking for suppression of evidence related to cell site location information, CSLI for short, that can track the movements of cellphones. Such information is used to help place individuals at specific locations at specific times.
Attorney William Norman, who represents Kaprise Sledge, 25, of Warren, filed a motion last December, citing what he viewed as flaws in the warrant used in a March 5, 2024, filing to secure a warrant and the CSLI in this case. Kaprise Sledge's father, Thomas Sledge, is 45, of Youngstown.
"The (search) warrant and (documents filed to obtain the search warrant) fail to establish particularized probable cause as required by the Fourth Amendment," the defense filing stated. The search warrant allowed an "impermissibly overbroad digital dragnet," the filing argued.
The filing stated 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 stated. "This is not a warrant founded on probable cause."
Federal prosecutors responded to that motion and others in February. U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio David Toepfer and three assistant U.S. attorneys filed a 33-page response that states that the government did have probable cause to ask for the cellular phone data associated with Davis' death.
The filing cited the 2018 U.S. Supreme Court Carpenter v United States ruling in which the nation's top court "expressly declined to decide whether individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in (related to CSLI) and "whether there is a limited period for which the government may obtain an individual's historical CSLI free from Fourth Amendment scrutiny."
The March 5, 2024, affidavit stated that "Davis was shot multiple times in the 600 block of Olive Avenue Northeast at approximately 1:46 p.m. Law enforcement officers recovered multiple (bullet) shell casings from the street and bullet fragments from the (U.S. Postal Service) delivery vehicle," the document stated.
The affidavit mentioned that a Ring doorbell in the "700 block of Olive Ave. NE captured a 2013 gray Dodge Ram pickup truck passing the residence in the direction of the homicide seconds before the shooting." The affidavit stated that a U.S. postal inspector found that the "suspect vehicle and suspect arrived in the area of the shooting sometime between 1:30 p.m. and 1:46 p.m." and that the Ram truck's travel to the Maryland Avenue Northeast residence ended between 1:35 p.m. and 1:50 p.m.
The prosecution filing stated that the affidavit submitted as part of the request for the CSLI data did establish a link between a specific cellphone and a specific crime. The affidavit did not give a specific cellphone number, but that was because the "point of the warrant was to find out what devices were present at both critical locations at the critical times listed," the filing stated.
The prosecution also responded to a defense motion asking that evidence seized from Kaprise Sledge's cellphones during his May 16, 2024, arrest be suppressed.
The prosecution filing stated that a Warren police officer was traveling on Youngstown Road in a cruiser with a radar system when the system alerted him near Woodbine Avenue that a Dodge Challenger was traveling 65 in a 35-mile-per-hour zone. The officer turned around, and the Challenger accelerated. The officer activated lights and siren and caught up to the vehicle at Ridge Road, making a traffic stop on Kaprise Sledge.
The officer could smell burnt marijuana coming from inside the Challenger. The officer asked Sledge to step out of the car and placed him under arrest for reckless operation. A search of the vehicle revealed marijuana residue, a few marijuana "roaches" and medical marijuana packages, the filing stated. Sledge was charged with speeding and reckless operation, both misdemeanors.
Two phones were removed from the vehicle and were taken to the police station as evidence. The vehicle, which was titled to another man, was towed to the impound lot, where the owner later retrieved it.
The traffic stop was "supported by probable cause and lawful under the Fourth Amendment," the prosecution filing stated. "A warrantless arrest is reasonable if the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect committed a crime in the officer's presence," even if the offense is a "minor crime," the filing stated.
The defense filing on that issue stated that the search of Sledge's vehicle was a violation of Sledge's Fourth Amendment rights against having his phones searched "without probable cause or exigent circumstances."
In most situations, those offenses would result in a traffic citation and immediate release, but Sledge was arrested, "at which time his cellphones were seized as part of his property," the filing stated. 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 defense filing stated.
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 defense filing stated.