Class Action Alleges D.C. Government Has Yet to Return Cell Phones Seized Years Ago As Part of Murder Investigation

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A material witness to a murder being investigated by the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department alleges the MPD wrongfully seized her vehicle and the iPhones of her two sons and kept the property for extended periods of time even though neither she nor her sons were involved in the case. 

The 38-page lawsuit against the Government of the District of Columbia states that the MPD seized in August 2019 the plaintiff’s 2013 Volkswagen Passat and the iPhones belonging to the woman’s seven- and 11-year-old sons in connection with a murder investigation. The suit alleges the D.C. MPD then kept the plaintiff’s car for almost two years even though it was processed for trace evidence within a few days, yielding an arrest and criminal case within a few months. 

According to the lawsuit, the D.C. government still has not returned the family’s iPhones, even though any trace evidence or fingerprints that might have been found on the devices could have been extracted within just a few days of their initial seizure. 

“Once the District has extracted all evidentiary value from vehicles and mobiles [sic] phones by searching and processing them the property has no evidentiary utility and should be released, at least subject to conditions to preserve and keep the property subject to Court supervision,” the lawsuit contends. 

The case claims the plaintiff’s situation evidences a broader policy and pattern by the D.C. government with regard to the withholding of seized property even after it no longer has evidentiary value. Although the evidentiary value of a mobile phone or vehicle, along with the government’s right to keep such property, must be analyzed separately from the contents of, or trace evidence found on or within, a vehicle or mobile device, the District nevertheless retains seized property for weeks, months or years on end, the suit attests. 

According to the complaint, the D.C. government engages in the alleged conduct even though seized vehicles and mobile phones themselves are “virtually never offered as evidence in criminal proceedings.” Instead, it is the content found inside a vehicle or mobile phone that is submitted as evidence in criminal matters, the case relays.

“The vehicles and phones themselves typically have no evidentiary value after they have been searched and processed for evidence,” the suit avers. “But, the District retains the vehicles or phones pursuant to the District’s policy of retaining ‘potentially discoverable material’ until the case is over or, if no judicial case is filed, for a period of three years from the date such material was first obtained.” 

The problem with the District’s policy is that it deprives property owners of their possessory interest in the items, and the property itself “wastes away during the illegal detention,” the lawsuit says, noting that property owners still must continue to pay car and phone bills even if their property is not within their possession. 

With regard to the plaintiff, the lawsuit says the D.C. MPD seized the woman’s car and held it for 20 months in connection with a shooting in front of the woman’s Parkland neighborhood home and a suspected related shooting close by. According to the complaint, the plaintiff’s Volkswagen Passat was found on the scene with bullet holes in the back of the car, and with suspected blood in and on the vehicle and on the ground nearby. The case says that the position of the vehicle relative to the suspected trajectory of bullet marks, closed-caption TV images and testimony led the D.C. government to believe the Passat had been moved from the scene of one of the shootings. 

The lawsuit states that the plaintiff was, at the time, the significant other of an individual who was the subject of an arrest warrant produced on October 30, 2019, the lawsuit states. The plaintiff was not allowed to pick up her vehicle until September 8, 2021, the case relays.

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