By Jessica Anderson
The Baltimore Sun
BALTIMORE — Maryland’s highest court has ruled that cell phone evidence gathered by a controversial tracking device can be used against a man accused in a 2014 killing in Northwest Baltimore.
The Maryland Court of Appeals this week reversed lower court rulings that had suppressed that evidence in the case against Robert Copes. Copes, 40, is charged with killing Ina Jenkins, 34.
“We’re very disappointed in the court’s ruling,” said Copes’ attorney, Brandon Mead.
A trial date has not been scheduled.
Jenkins’ burned body was found Feb. 4, 2014, behind a vacant building in the 4000 block of Penhurst Ave. Police said Copes killed Jenkins in his apartment across the street.
Detectives obtained a court order to use a device known as a stingray to trace a cellphone that belonged to Jenkins to Copes’ apartment. A stingray mimics a cellphone tower, triggering all phones in the area to connect to it, to locate a specific device.
The Copes case came at a time when Baltimore police and other departments around the country were withholding information about their use of stingray devices, citing nondisclosure agreements with the FBI. Baltimore’s use of the technology first came to light in a separate case in 2014. The police department said it had used the stingray device thousands of times.
Copes allowed a homicide detective into his apartment. The detective testified he saw cleaning supplies, carpet that had been torn up and bleach stains. Police later found the phone they were searching for inside the home. Police obtained a search warrant and found Jenkins’ blood inside the apartment.
Copes was charged with first-degree murder. He maintains his innocence, Mead said.
Copes’ attorneys moved to suppress the evidence, arguing that the Police Department’s “use of a cell site simulator was a warrantless and unreasonable search in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”
Circuit Judge Yolanda Tanner granted the motion. She said she believed police investigators acted in good faith, following procedures that had been put in place by the city law department and the state’s attorney’s office, but “it was nonetheless an unconstitutional search.”
The Court of Special Appeals affirmed Tanner’s ruling in October.
But the state’s highest court ruled that “the evidence need not be suppressed” because “the detectives in this case acted in ‘objectively reasonable good faith.’ ”
“We were very delighted in the opinion,” said Antonio Gioia, a prosecutor with the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office.
In a dissenting opinion, Court of Appeals Judge Michele D. Hotten wrote that the use of the stingray device requires a search warrant, or an order satisfying the constitutional requirements of a warrant, unless an established exception applies. She said the use of the device in the Copes’ case “was insufficient to satisfy that threshold.”
Maryland courts ruled in 2016 that police must obtain a probable-cause warrant to track cellphones with a stingray.
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©2017 The Baltimore Sun