Background
Lance Delorean Hardon was convicted by a jury of intentionally discharging a firearm from a motor vehicle, intentionally discharging a firearm at a dwelling, possessing a firearm and ammunition as a felon, and three counts of felony-firearm, second offense. The charges arose from four shots fired from a vehicle into a Port Huron home shortly before 4:45 a.m. on March 7, 2022. No eyewitness saw the shooting, and police never recovered the firearm.
Security footage showed a silver Toyota Avalon traveling near the victim’s home and recorded shots being fired from the driver’s side. Hardon admitted that he was alone in the Avalon at a nearby gas station shortly before the shooting, though he denied committing it. Police also relied on information obtained from a forensic search of Hardon’s phone and from his cellular carrier to map the vehicle’s movements. The trial court denied Hardon’s posttrial request for a new trial, and he appealed his convictions and sentences.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed. Applying the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision in People v. Carson, the court held that the warrant authorizing the forensic search of Hardon’s Samsung phone lacked particularity because it permitted an expansive search of nearly every category of data without meaningful limits. The T-Mobile warrant was sufficiently particular because it identified specified categories of records and limited most requested data to March 6 through March 8, 2022. But both warrant affidavits lacked probable cause because neither supplied specific facts connecting information likely to be found on Hardon’s phone or in the carrier records to the shooting. The good-faith exception did not apply.
Suppression nevertheless would not have changed the outcome because independent surveillance footage and Hardon’s admissions overwhelmingly placed him and the matching vehicle near the shooting. The court therefore found no plain error affecting substantial rights and no ineffective assistance from counsel’s failure to seek suppression. It also rejected challenges to the cell-site expert and an officer’s lay comparison of vehicles shown in surveillance footage, concluding that counsel’s handling of the expert evidence was reasonable and that the officer’s observations were admissible under MRE 701.
The trial court did err by treating as hearsay statements offered to explain why Hardon searched online for information about a Port Huron shooting. Those statements were offered to show their effect on Hardon, not to prove their truth. The error was harmless, however, because Hardon was still able to explain that he conducted the searches out of concern for his safety. With no combination of prejudicial errors undermining the verdict, the court also rejected his cumulative-error claim.
Key Takeaways
- A cell-phone warrant authorizing a search across virtually every category of data without meaningful categorical or temporal limits fails the particularity requirement.
- Even a sufficiently particular warrant requires facts establishing a nexus between the suspected crime and the phone or carrier data to be searched.
- Constitutional and evidentiary errors do not require reversal when compelling independent evidence makes them harmless.
Why It Matters
The decision applies Michigan’s heightened scrutiny of digital-search warrants and underscores that broad references to an investigation cannot substitute for meaningful limits on the data officers may examine. Temporal and categorical restrictions can satisfy particularity, but they do not cure an affidavit that fails to explain why evidence of the crime probably will be found in the requested data.
The opinion also illustrates the practical force of harmless-error review: even where warrants are constitutionally defective and the good-faith exception is unavailable, a conviction may stand if independent evidence overwhelmingly supports the verdict.