United States of America v. Linwood Douglas Thorne

United States Court of Appeals
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT
Argued September 15, 2025 Decided March 17, 2026
No. 23-3054
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
APPELLEE
v.
LINWOOD D OUGLAS THORNE ,
APPELLANT
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Columbia
(No. 1:18-cr-00389-1)
Timothy Cone, appointed by the court, argued the cause
and filed the briefs for appellant.
Bryan H. Han, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the cause
for appellee. With him on the brief were Chrisellen R. Kolb
and Nicholas P. Coleman, Assistant U.S. Attorneys.
Chimnomnso N. Kalu, Assistant U.S. Attorney, entered an
appearance.
Before: PAN and GARCIA, Circuit Judges, and ROGERS ,
Senior Circuit Judge.
Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge PAN .

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Opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment
filed by Senior Circuit Judge ROGERS .
PAN , Circuit Judge: Law enforcement officers routinely
track the locations of cell phones to obtain leads and evidence
when investigating suspected criminal activity. They can
pinpoint a cell phone’s whereabouts within just a few feet.
In this case, Linwood Thorne contends that the
government tracked his cell phone without a valid warrant.
According to Thorne, the warrant that officers obtained
violated the venue provision of Rule 41(b) of the Federal Rules
of Criminal Procedure because the D.C.-based magistrate
judge who signed the warrant had an insufficient basis to find
that the targeted cell phone was located within the District of
Columbia at the time that the warrant was issued. That
jurisdictional error, he asserts, invalidates the warrant, requires
suppression of critical evidence, and thus mandates reversal of
his convictions on drug-trafficking and firearms charges.
Because law enforcement officers relied in good faith on
the warrant, regardless of whether it was lawfully issued,
suppression is unwarranted and we affirm.
I. Background
A. Factual Background
In 2018, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF),
and the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD)
conducted a joint, interstate investigation of Omar Elbakkoush,
whom they suspected of trafficking in drugs and firearms. The
investigation spanned D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, where
undercover agents conducted multiple controlled buys of drugs
and firearms from Elbakkoush. Those activities led authorities

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to Elbakkoush’s suspected heroin supplier: appellant Linwood
Thorne.
By surveilling Elbakkoush and Thorne in D.C. and
Maryland, law enforcement officers determined that Thorne
likely resided with his girlfriend, Kelli Davis-Johnson, at her
home on Foote Street in northeast D.C., and that he owned an
auto body shop called “Dou’ Perfect” in Clinton, Maryland.
On December 19, 2018, officers executed search warrants at
both properties.
In the D.C. residence, officers found over fifty pounds of
marijuana in duffle bags, as well as about forty-four kilograms
of heroin and fentanyl in locked tool chests. They also
discovered drug paraphernalia, including sifters, blenders,
digital scales, and small baggies. In the master bedroom were
six guns, five of which were concealed in bags and unregistered
(three Glock pistols, a Ruger pistol, and a Taurus pistol); the
sixth gun was lawfully registered to Davis-Johnson. Thorne’s
name was on a receipt, mail, and a hotel membership card
located in the same bedroom. In the Maryland auto body shop,
officers found Thorne’s passport, his birth certificate, his credit
card, and a lease to the property in his name.
After the searches of Thorne’s suspected home and place
of business, a grand jury in the District of Columbia indicted
Thorne on multiple criminal charges, and a warrant was issued
for his arrest. Law enforcement officers from the U.S.
Marshals Service, the ATF, and the FBI sought to determine
Thorne’s whereabouts to execute the arrest warrant. They did
so in part by tracking his cellular devices.
The agents knew of two cell-phone numbers associated
with Thorne. The first had a Maryland area code — 301. Law
enforcement became aware of that phone number through a pen
register installed on Elbakkoush’s cell phone, and they traced

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the 301 number to Thorne’s Maryland auto body shop. After
the authorities searched the D.C. home on Foote Street,
Thorne’s girlfriend confirmed that the 301 number belonged to
Thorne.
The second phone number had a D.C. area code — 202.
Agents learned of Thorne’s connection to that phone from a
Maryland-based attorney, Ivan Bates, who claimed to represent
Thorne. Bates and another attorney contacted the authorities
and attempted to negotiate Thorne’s voluntary surrender —
either at the attorneys’ Baltimore offices or at a courthouse in
D.C. When those negotiations failed, law enforcement officers
endeavored to track both of Thorne’s cell phones so that they
could effectuate his arrest.
For each of Thorne’s phone numbers, the officers applied
for two types of cell-phone location warrants: a GPS-ping
warrant and a cell-site-simulator warrant. A GPS-ping warrant
“orders a cellular telephone company to affirmatively create
evidence about the whereabouts of a particular cellular
telephone” by sending a “ping” to the cell phone, collecting the
GPS coordinates reported back, and transmitting those results
to law enforcement. In re Search of Cellular Tel., 430 F. Supp.
3d 1264, 1273 (D. Utah 2019). After “pinging” the phone, the
carrier uses satellite data to triangulate the phone’s
approximate location, United States v. Caraballo, 831 F.3d 95,
99 (2d Cir. 2016), within about 500–1,000 meters.
By contrast, a cell-site-simulator warrant allows law
enforcement officers to more precisely pinpoint a phone’s
location. The cell-site simulator mimics a cell tower with “an
especially strong signal,” which “induces nearby cell phones to
connect and reveal their direction relative to the device.”
United States v. Patrick, 842 F.3d 540, 542 (7th Cir. 2016).
The simulator initially collects unique identifying numbers

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from all devices nearby, but it then can be focused on the
targeted cell phone. U.S. Dep’t of Just., Department of Justice
Policy Guidance: Use of Cell-Site Simulator Technology 2
(2015), https://perma.cc/8TG4-JZ3V. By continuously
analyzing signal strength and directional information in real
time, the cell-site simulator can come close to determining a
cell phone’s exact location.
Here, a D.C. magistrate judge issued GPS-ping warrants
and cell-site-simulator warrants for each of Thorne’s Maryland
and D.C. phone numbers. Law enforcement officers used the
warrants to determine the location of Thorne’s D.C. cell phone
but not his Maryland phone, which was turned off at the
relevant time. Ping data for the D.C. number revealed the
phone’s location in Baltimore, Maryland. A cell-site simulator
deployed in Maryland then ascertained the phone’s location at
an apartment on Linden Avenue in Baltimore. The officers
apprehended Thorne at that apartment.
During the arrest, law enforcement officers seized four cell
phones, two belonging to Thorne and two belonging to James
Hutchings, Thorne’s drug-trafficking partner. They searched
the contents of the cell phones after obtaining a warrant to do
so. Evidence recovered from the phones confirmed that the
unregistered firearms found at the Foote Street residence
belonged to Thorne: Text messages on Hutchings’s phone
showed that Thorne purchased the firearms from a straw
purchaser with Hutchings acting as the middleman.
B. Procedural Background
A grand jury indicted Thorne on six counts: possession
with intent to distribute heroin, in violation of 21 U.S.C.
§ 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(A)(i) (count 1); possession of a firearm in
furtherance of a drug-trafficking offense, in violation of 18
U.S.C. § 924(c)(1) (count 2); unlawful possession of a firearm,

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in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) (count 3); possession with
intent to distribute marijuana, in violation of 21 U.S.C.
§ 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(D) (count 4); possession with intent to
distribute fentanyl, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1),
(b)(1)(C) (count 5); and conspiracy to distribute a controlled
substance (heroin, marijuana, and fentanyl), in violation of 21
U.S.C. § 846 (count 6).
Thorne filed a motion to suppress the evidence obtained
from the Linden Avenue search on the ground that the cell-site-
simulator warrant violated Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure
41(b).1 He argued that there was insufficient evidence for the
D.C.-based magistrate judge to make the requisite finding that
the phone was located in the District at the time of the warrant’s
issuance. The district court denied the motion, holding that (1)
the magistrate judge properly issued the warrant in compliance
with the applicable rule, and (2) even if the magistrate judge
erred, law enforcement officers relied in good faith on the
warrant and no evidence should be suppressed. See United
States v. Thorne, 548 F. Supp. 3d 70, 129–30, 139 (D.D.C.
2021).
After a seven-day trial, a jury convicted Thorne on all the
drug-trafficking counts (counts 1, 4–6) and on one count of
unlawful possession of a firearm (count 3). It found Thorne
not guilty of possessing a firearm in furtherance of a drug-
trafficking offense (count 2). The court sentenced Thorne to a
total of 360 months of incarceration followed by 120 months
of supervised release. Thorne timely appealed the district
court’s ruling on his motion to suppress. We have jurisdiction
under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.
1 Thorne did not challenge the validity of the GPS-ping warrants,
which were obtained under the Stored Communications Act (SCA),
or of the cell-site-simulator warrant for his 301-area-code cell phone.

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II. Analysis
On appeal, Thorne renews his argument that the cell-site-
simulator warrant for his 202-area-code cell phone was invalid
because it violated Rule 41(b) of the Federal Rules of Criminal
Procedure. He further argues that the good-faith exception to
the warrant requirement is inapplicable. He seeks reversal of
all his convictions because, he claims, the evidence from the
allegedly illegal search was critical to his firearms conviction
and also infected his drug-related convictions.
We are unpersuaded. Even assuming that the magistrate
judge erred in issuing the cell-site-simulator warrant, we hold
that suppression of the fruits of that warrant is unjustified
because the investigating officers reasonably relied on the
warrant in good faith. See United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897,
920 (1984); United States v. Magruder, 126 F.4th 671, 679
(D.C. Cir. 2025). We therefore affirm the judgment of the
district court.
Because we rely on the good-faith doctrine, we do not
resolve Thorne’s primary argument that a warrant issued under
Rule 41(b) must be premised on probable cause that the persons
or objects to be searched or seized are “within the district.”
A. The District Court’s Decision
Thorne’s motion to suppress evidence argued that the
magistrate judge who issued the cell-site-simulator warrant
violated Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(b), which
authorizes the district court to issue warrants for persons or
property that are located within the court’s jurisdiction.
Rule 41(b) generally allows a judge “with authority in the
district . . . to issue a warrant to search for and seize a person
or property located within the district.” Fed. R. Crim. P.

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41(b)(1). But it also provides that “a warrant for a person or
property outside the district” is valid so long as “the person or
property is located within the district when the warrant is issued
but might move or be moved outside the district before the
warrant is executed.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 41(b)(2). Here, when
the magistrate judge signed the cell-site-simulator warrant, she
implicitly credited the government’s representation that
Thorne’s cell phone was presently located within the District
of Columbia but might be moved outside the District before the
warrant was executed. See App. 321 (warrant affidavit) (noting
that “there is reason to believe the Target Cellular Device is
currently located somewhere within this district,” and stating
that “[p]ursuant to Rule 41(b)(2), law enforcement may locate
the Target Cellular Device outside the district provided the
device is within the district when the warrant is issued”).
In his suppression motion, Thorne claimed that the warrant
was facially invalid and void ab initio. He asserted that there
was insufficient evidence that the targeted cell phone was
“located within the district,” as required by the Rule, when the
magistrate judge issued the warrant. As a result, he argued, the
execution of the warrant in Maryland was unlawful, and any
evidence obtained based on the warrant must be suppressed —
including the information linking him to five of the firearms
found at the Foote Street residence.
The district court denied Thorne’s motion to suppress. See
Thorne, 548 F. Supp. 3d at 139. After noting that the degree of
certainty required to find that a “person or property is located
within the district” under Rule 41(b) is an issue of first
impression, id. at 117, it ruled that the finding must be based
on a “reasonable belief.” The district court rejected Thorne’s
argument that the Rule requires actual knowledge that the
object in question is within the district at the time of the
warrant’s issuance, reasoning that such an interpretation would

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produce “absurd results” and conflict with Fourth Amendment
precedents that favor a more flexible reading of the Rule. Id.
at 119–24. Instead, the district court agreed with the
government that the Rule requires only a “reason to believe”
that the warrant’s object is located within the district. Id. at
117. The district court concluded that no violation occurred
here because officers had reason to believe that Thorne and his
202-area-code cell phone were in the District of Columbia at
the time the warrant issued, given that he resided in the District
and used a cell phone with a D.C. area code. Id. at 127–29.2
The district court rejected the government’s alternative
argument that the Rule required the magistrate judge to find
“probable cause” that the targeted phone was located within the
district. Thorne, 548 F. Supp. 3d at 125. It explained that
requiring that degree of certainty would absurdly require law
enforcement officers to know which single jurisdiction
Thorne’s cell phone was most likely to be in, when the purpose
of the warrant was to discover that very information. See id. at
125–26. The district court further reasoned that the evidence
before it pointed equally to Thorne’s presence in “two judicial
districts” — i.e., D.C. and Maryland — and that law
enforcement officers therefore would be “unable to establish
venue in any jurisdiction” under a probable-cause standard. Id.
at 126 (emphasis in original); see also id. (“[N]either the
evidence connecting defendant to the District of Columbia nor
the evidence connecting defendant to Maryland creates a ‘fair
probability’ that defendant was in one district rather than the
other.”). The district court concluded that requiring such a high
degree of certainty would be at odds with the Fourth
Amendment and the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure
2 The government points out that whether the use of a cell-site
simulator constitutes a Fourth Amendment search is an open
question. But the government does not argue that no warrant was
necessary because there was no search, so we do not reach that issue.

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because it would make warrants less accessible in a geographic
area “where residents have easy access to at least three
adjoining jurisdictions” — i.e., D.C., Maryland, and Virginia.
Id.
In the alternative, the district court denied Thorne’s
suppression motion by applying the good-faith exception to the
warrant requirement. Thorne, 548 F. Supp. 3d at 129–35
(citing Leon, 468 U.S. at 921). The court held that even if the
cell-site-simulator warrant violated the venue provision of Rule
41(b), the officers’ good-faith reliance on that warrant was
objectively reasonable, and suppression of the evidence
therefore was not appropriate. Id. at 132.
B. The Good-Faith Exception
We agree with the district court that the fruits of the cell-
site-simulator search at issue were admissible under the good-
faith exception to the warrant requirement, even if the
magistrate judge issued the warrant in error. See Leon, 468
U.S. at 920; Magruder, 126 F.4th at 679. We therefore
“exercise [our] informed discretion” to affirm the judgment of
the district court on that ground, without deciding the merits of
Thorne’s claim that the warrant was invalid under Rule 41(b).
Leon, 468 U.S. at 925; see also Herring v. United States, 555
U.S. 135, 139 (2009) (assuming a Fourth Amendment violation
and resolving the petition based on the good-faith exception).
1. Background Principles
The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches
and seizures, including certain investigatory searches
conducted without a valid warrant. See U.S. Const. amend. IV;
see also Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357 (1967) (noting
that warrantless searches “are per se unreasonable under the
Fourth Amendment — subject only to a few specifically

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established and well-delineated exceptions” (cleaned up));
United States v. Green, 149 F.4th 733, 743 (D.C. Cir. 2025).
As a general matter, evidence obtained in violation of the
Fourth Amendment is subject to the exclusionary rule and must
be suppressed — i.e., it may not be used by prosecutors to
establish a criminal defendant’s guilt. Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S.
643, 654 (1961); see also Leon, 468 U.S. at 905–06; Green,
149 F.4th at 743 (“If the government oversteps th[e]
constitutional boundary [prohibiting warrantless searches], the
remedy is generally exclusion — courts must suppress the
unlawfully obtained evidence and any derivative evidence
tainted by the violation unless an exception applies.”).
Although suppression of evidence is the default remedy
for a Fourth Amendment violation, the Supreme Court
recognized a good-faith exception to that general rule in United
States v. Leon: When an officer relies in good faith on a
warrant issued by a judicial officer, even if that warrant is later
found to be deficient, evidence discovered as a result of the
unlawful search or seizure will not be suppressed. 468 U.S. at
920–21.
In Leon, officers obtained a warrant to search multiple
residences and vehicles for evidence of alleged drug-
trafficking, but that warrant was issued in error because it was
unsupported by probable cause. 468 U.S. at 902, 926.
Although the search without probable cause violated the Fourth
Amendment, the Supreme Court held that the discovered
evidence need not be suppressed. Id. at 926. The Court
reasoned that the officers had properly sought a warrant, did
not exhibit “dishonest[y] or reckless[ness] in preparing their
affidavit,” and had “an objectively reasonable belief in the
existence of probable cause.” Id. Thus, exclusion of the
evidence would not serve its intended purpose of “deter[ring]
police misconduct” and instead would “punish the errors of

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judges and magistrates.” Id. at 916. The Court explained that
the exclusionary rule is “a judicially created remedy designed
to safeguard Fourth Amendment rights generally through its
deterrent effect” on law enforcement officers. Id. at 906
(quoting United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 348 (1974)).
In the absence of a “substantial deterrent effect,” the rule
cannot “pay its way” to justify the substantial cost to society of
depriving a jury of probative, reliable evidence. Id. at 907 n.6
(citation omitted). Thus, “when an officer acting with
objective good faith has obtained a search warrant from a judge
or magistrate and acted within its scope,” id. at 920, the fruits
of that warrant will be shielded from suppression, even if the
warrant issued in error.
Since Leon, the Court has expanded the good-faith
exception to apply in other situations where law enforcement
officers have acted reasonably and in good faith, but ultimately
unlawfully. Under such circumstances, where a Fourth
Amendment violation occurs in the absence of police
misconduct, the Court has determined that the cost of excluding
evidence outweighs any potential deterrent benefit. It has
therefore extended the good-faith exception to cases involving
evidence that was unlawfully obtained in reliance on: (1) a
statute later found to be unconstitutional, Illinois v. Krull, 480
U.S. 340, 346, 359–60 (1987); (2) binding precedent that was
later overturned, Davis v. United States, 564 U.S. 229, 239–40
(2011); and (3) a warrant database later found to contain errors,
Arizona v. Evans, 514 U.S. 1, 14 (1995); Herring, 555 U.S. at
136–37.
In each of those cases, despite mistakes leading to a search
or seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment, the Supreme
Court weighed the culpability of the law enforcement officers,
see Herring, 555 U.S. at 143, in determining whether the
deterrent effect of suppressing evidence justified the “high cost

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to both the truth and the public safety,” Davis, 564 U.S. at 232;
see also id. at 237 (noting the heavy toll of “ignor[ing] reliable,
trustworthy evidence bearing on guilt or innocence” and, in
some cases, “set[ting] the criminal loose in the community
without punishment”). In performing that balancing test, the
Court has held that evidence should be suppressed when
officers do not act in good faith, i.e., “when the police exhibit
deliberate, reckless, or grossly negligent disregard for Fourth
Amendment rights.” Id. at 238 (cleaned up). In that type of
scenario, “the deterrent value of exclusion is strong and tends
to outweigh the resulting costs.” Id. Likewise, when a
violation is caused by “recurring or systemic negligence on the
part of law enforcement,” suppression is warranted. Id. at 240
(cleaned up).
Consistent with the Supreme Court’s precedents, we have
routinely applied the good-faith exception to foreclose the
suppression of unlawfully obtained evidence under
circumstances where law enforcement officers were essentially
blameless. See, e.g., United States v. Matthews, 753 F.3d 1321,
1325–26 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (applying Leon where a warrant later
was determined to be invalid); United States v. Southerland,
486 F.3d 1355, 1361 (D.C. Cir. 2007) (applying Evans and the
good-faith exception to avoid suppressing evidence obtained
after an error in a database indicated that the defendant’s
driver’s license was suspended).
Moreover, we also have applied the good-faith exception
in a case that did not directly implicate the Fourth Amendment.
In Magruder, we determined that suppression of certain
evidence was not required even though it was obtained in
reliance on a warrant with an alleged statutory jurisdictional
defect. 126 F.4th at 679. There, the defendant argued that the
warrant in question was invalid because the issuing judge
lacked jurisdiction under the Stored Communications Act

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(SCA). Id. We assumed that suppression of evidence would
be an appropriate remedy if the warrant were unlawful, but we
nevertheless determined that, even if the “magistrate acted in
error, the evidence [wa]s admissible under the good-faith
exception.” Id. Applying Leon, we concluded that because
officers relied in good faith on the warrant, suppression could
not “justify the substantial costs of exclusion.” Id. (quoting
Leon, 468 U.S. at 922).
While the instant case presents our first opportunity to
consider whether the good-faith exception may be applied
where a defendant alleges a violation of Rule 41(b), eleven of
our sister circuits have extended that exception to this very
context. See United States v. Levin, 874 F.3d 316, 321–24 (1st
Cir. 2017) (concluding that the good-faith exception can apply
to Rule 41(b) jurisdictional violations); United States v. Eldred,
933 F.3d 110, 118–21 (2d Cir. 2019) (same); United States v.
Werdene, 883 F.3d 204, 216–18 (3d Cir. 2018) (same), cert.
denied, 586 U.S. 896 (2018); United States v. McLamb, 880
F.3d 685, 690–91 (4th Cir. 2018) (same), cert. denied, 586 U.S.
855 (2018); United States v. Ganzer, 922 F.3d 579, 586–87 (5th
Cir. 2019) (same), cert. denied, 589 U.S. 995 (2019); United
States v. Moorehead, 912 F.3d 963, 966–67 (6th Cir. 2019)
(same), cert. denied, 589 U.S. 999 (2019); United States v.
Kienast, 907 F.3d 522, 527–29 (7th Cir. 2018) (same), cert.
denied, 587 U.S. 972 (2019); United States v. Horton, 863 F.3d
1041, 1050–51 (8th Cir. 2017) (same), cert. denied, 584 U.S.
918 (2018); United States v. Henderson, 906 F.3d 1109, 1118–
19 (9th Cir. 2018) (same), cert. denied, 587 U.S. 995 (2019);
United States v. Workman, 863 F.3d 1313, 1317–19 (10th Cir.
2017) (same), cert. denied, 584 U.S. 935 (2018); United States
v. Taylor, 935 F.3d 1279, 1288–91 (11th Cir. 2019) (same),
cert. denied, 589 U.S. 1268 (2020).

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2. Application of the Exception
Against that backdrop, we conclude that the good-faith
exception applies to warrants issued in violation of Rule 41(b).
Our holding is a natural extension of Leon and Magruder and
is consistent with the decisions of every other court of appeals
that has considered the issue.
Here, like in Leon, officers properly obtained and relied on
a warrant. The warrant authorized them to use a cell-site
simulator to ascertain the location of Thorne’s cell phone,
which led to Thorne’s arrest and the discovery of incriminating
evidence. The officers acted in good-faith reliance on the
warrant, and did not engage in “deliberate, reckless, or grossly
negligent” conduct. Davis, 564 U.S. at 238 (cleaned up).
Indeed, the investigating officers submitted a warrant
application that appropriately addressed the venue issue and
provided facts to allow the magistrate judge to make the
requisite findings. The warrant affidavit stated, in relevant
part:
[T]here is reason to believe the Target Cellular
Device is currently located somewhere within
this district because the Target Cellular Device
belongs to Linwood Thorne (“THORNE”) and
THORNE resided at 4215 Foote Street
Northeast, Washington, D.C., on or about
December 19, 2018. . . . After speaking to a
different resident of the house, law enforcement
confirmed that THORNE continued to use the
Target Cellular Device as his own cell phone.
Pursuant to Rule 41(b)(2), law enforcement
may locate the Target Cellular Device outside
the district provided the device is within the
district when the warrant is issued.

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App. 321 (warrant affidavit). Beyond providing that
information, there was little more that the officers could have
done to demonstrate that they had a good-faith belief that the
cell phone was in the District of Columbia on December 26,
just seven days after they confirmed that Thorne lived in D.C.
Thorne essentially asserts that the magistrate judge who
issued the warrant made a legal error concerning the degree of
certainty with which the location of the targeted cell phone
should have been established before the warrant could be
approved. He claims that the magistrate judge was required to
find “probable cause” that the cell phone was in the District,
and that there was insufficient evidence to meet that standard.
That novel legal issue has not previously been addressed by an
appellate court, and it fell within the province of the magistrate
judge to resolve it in the first instance. Cf. McLamb, 880 F.3d
at 689, 691 (noting the unsettled permissibility of remote-
access investigative techniques and concluding that law
enforcement acted in good faith by submitting the question to
attorneys and the issuing judge). And by issuing the warrant,
the magistrate judge implicitly determined that she had
jurisdiction to do so. Because the asserted error is attributable
only to the issuing magistrate judge and not to the investigating
officers — who were entitled to rely on the judge’s conclusion
that she had jurisdiction — suppression of evidence would not
“logically contribute to the deterrence” of police misconduct.
Leon, 468 U.S. at 921.
This case is also much like Magruder because Thorne
makes a claim of improper venue that deprived the magistrate
judge of jurisdiction to issue the cell-site-simulator warrant.
See Magruder, 126 F.4th at 679. In Magruder, the defendant
sought to withdraw his guilty plea because, he contended, his
ineffective attorney failed to argue that the GPS-ping warrant
issued by a judge in the Eastern District of Louisiana was

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jurisdictionally flawed and therefore invalid. Id. at 675, 679.
Specifically, Magruder argued that the affidavit in support of
the warrant failed to provide facts sufficient to establish venue,
Brief for Appellant at 31–34, Magruder, 126 F.4th 671 (No.
22-3025), 2024 WL 380969, under the SCA’s requirement that
the issuing court either have “jurisdiction over the offense
being investigated” or be in the district where the cellular
service is located or its data is stored, 18 U.S.C.
§ 2711(3)(A)(i), (ii). Without addressing the merits of
Magruder’s argument, we concluded that the good-faith
exception easily disposed of his contention that the evidence at
issue would have been suppressed had his attorney challenged
the warrant. Magruder, 126 F.4th at 679. Whatever
jurisdictional flaw may have existed in the Magruder warrant
due to a violation of the SCA’s venue requirement, any such
flaw was rendered immaterial by the good-faith exception.
Because the alleged statutory violation in Magruder is
analogous to the alleged violation of Rule 41(b) in this case,
our rationale for applying the good-faith doctrine in Magruder
strongly supports a similar outcome here.
In sum, our extension of the good-faith exception to the
present circumstances is supported by (1) a straightforward
application of the principles that underlie the exception; (2) our
previous application of the exception to an analogous alleged
statutory defect in a warrant; and (3) numerous on-point
precedents from other circuits. Because the investigating
officers relied on the cell-site-simulator warrant in good faith,
the fruits of that warrant need not be suppressed, even if the
warrant was issued in error.
We are unconvinced by Thorne’s contrary argument.
Thorne claims that the asserted jurisdictional defect in the cell-
site-simulator warrant renders it facially invalid and void ab
initio, precluding application of the good-faith exception

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18
altogether. But both cases he cites in support of that argument
are inapposite. The court in Glover reasoned that the good-
faith exception was inapplicable because “Congress ha[d]
spoken.” United States v. Glover, 736 F.3d 509, 516 (D.C. Cir.
2013). Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets
Act — the statute under which the warrant had issued —
explicitly prohibited the admission of any evidence collected
in violation of that chapter. Id. at 513, 515–16 (citing 18 U.S.C.
§ 2515). Rule 41(b) contains no such categorical prohibition.
And the Tenth Circuit in United States v. Krueger only
accepted the lower court’s holding that the good-faith
exception did not apply because the government failed to
challenge that conclusion on appeal. 809 F.3d 1109, 1113 n.5
(10th Cir. 2015).
Moreover, both cases are factually distinguishable because
they involved the issuance of facially invalid search warrants
for objects undisputedly outside the courts’ jurisdiction at the
relevant times. See Glover, 736 F.3d at 510, 515 (suppressing
the fruits of a warrant issued in D.C. permitting law
enforcement to place a listening device in a vehicle parked in
Maryland, a fact expressly acknowledged in the warrant
affidavit); Krueger, 809 F.3d at 1111, 1113, 1117 (suppressing
the fruits of a search warrant issued by a judge in Kansas for a
home in Oklahoma — a fixed location undeniably outside the
Kansas judge’s jurisdiction). Here, of course, the cell-site-
simulator warrant issued for Thorne’s 202-area-code cell
phone suffered from no such facial invalidity. The warrant
application cited evidence to support a finding that Thorne and
his cell phone likely were in the District of Columbia at the
time the warrant issued because Thorne’s residence was in the
District. Thus, there was no facial defect that would arguably
preclude application of the good-faith exception.

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C. Standard of Proof Under Rule 41(b)
Because we conclude that the good-faith exception applies
to the cell-site-simulator search at issue and that the fruits of
the search therefore need not be suppressed, we decline to
resolve Thorne’s primary argument on appeal — namely, that
the magistrate judge issued the warrant without the requisite
degree of certainty that the 202-area-code cell phone was
located in D.C. Nevertheless, we note the following issue with
the district court’s analysis of this question.
As previously discussed, the district court held that the
magistrate judge was required to find that there was “reason to
believe” that the object of the warrant was “located within the
district” at the time of the warrant’s issuance. Thorne, 548 F.
Supp. 3d at 127. The district court rejected the more rigorous
“probable cause” standard because, it reasoned, the evidence
pointed equally to Thorne’s presence in D.C. and Maryland, so
applying that standard would render the law enforcement
officers “unable to establish venue in any jurisdiction.” Id. at
126 (emphasis in original).
That reasoning appears to assume that the magistrate judge
could only find probable cause that the cell phone was located
in a single jurisdiction. See Thorne, 548 F. Supp. 3d at 126
(“[N]either the evidence connecting defendant to the District of
Columbia nor the evidence connecting defendant to Maryland
creates a ‘fair probability’ that defendant was in one district
rather than the other.” (emphasis added)). The Supreme Court,
however, has held that “probable cause” merely requires a “fair
probability,” that it is “not a high bar,” and that it demands less
than fifty-percent certainty. Kaley v. United States, 571 U.S.
320, 338 (2014) (cleaned up); see also Gerstein v. Pugh, 420
U.S. 103, 121 (1975) (“[Probable cause] does not require the

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fine resolution of conflicting evidence that a reasonable-doubt
or even a preponderance standard demands . . . .”).
Thus, contrary to the district court’s analysis, the probable-
cause standard did not impose an evidentiary bar that was too
high to permit a finding of venue “in any jurisdiction.” Instead,
the evidence in this case supported two findings of probable
cause (i.e., a “fair probability”) regarding the targeted cell
phone’s location: There was probable cause to believe that the
cell phone was in D.C., based on evidence that Thorne resided
at the Foote Street address; and there also was probable cause
to believe that the phone was in Maryland, based on evidence
that Thorne’s place of business, Dou’ Perfect, was in Clinton.
Putting aside the flaw in the district court’s reasoning,
there may be good reason to think that probable cause — the
“commonsense, practical” inquiry that is core to the Fourth
Amendment, Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 230 (1983) — is
the most appropriate standard to apply in the Rule 41(b)
context. But we reserve the question for another day.
* * *
For the foregoing reasons, the district court properly
applied the good-faith exception to the warrant requirement to
deny Thorne’s motion to suppress evidence. We therefore
affirm the judgment of the district court.
So ordered.

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R OGERS , Senior Judge, concurring in part and concurring
in the judgment: I join the court in holding that the good-faith
exception to the warrant requirement under the Fourth
Amendment to the Constitution, United States v. Leon, 468
U.S. 897, 920 (1984), requires affirmance of Thorne’s
conviction. Accordingly, it is unnecessary for the court to
address Thorne’s other challenges, and I do not join the dictum
in the court’s opinion.
Presented with a question of first impression regarding the
standard to apply in challenges to venue under Federal Rule of
Criminal Procedure 41(b)(2), the district court acknowledged
the probable cause standard for warrants under the Fourth
Amendment, citing Illinois v Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 238 (1983).
United States v. Thorne, 548 F. Supp. 3d 70, 125 (D.D.C.
2021). Then, citing the United States Court of Appeals for the
Third Circuit, the district court applied the “reason to believe”
standard of New York v. Payton, 445 U.S. 573, 603 (1980), to
the Rule. Id. at 126; see id. at 125 (citing United States v.
Vasquez-Algarin, 821 F.3d 467, 476 (3d Cir. 2016)). The Third
Circuit surveyed Supreme Court precedent regarding the
probable cause and reasonable belief standards, and it analyzed
how that precedent has been applied by different circuits.
Vasquez-Algarin, 821 F.3d at 473–80. It noted that this court,
in United States v. Thomas, 429 F.3d 282, 286 (D.C. Cir. 2005),
and the United States Court of Appeals for the First, Second,
and Tenth Circuits have determined that the reasonable belief
standard requires less certainty than the probable cause
standard. Id. at 474.
The district court’s analysis indicates that there are at least
two reasonable interpretations of the evidentiary standard
required to establish venue under Rule 41(b)(2). See Thorne,
548 F. Supp. 3d at 124–27. In Part II.C, the court comments
today on the district court’s determination of the Rule 41(b)(2)
standard, critiquing the district court’s probable cause analysis
at 19–20. This dictum could be understood to take a position

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2
on the correct standard for establishing venue or to critique the
district court’s analysis of the probable cause standard under
the Fourth Amendment. Resolution of neither issue is
necessary to the court’s decision, and I would leave such
matters for another day.

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