Detective Testifies about Unconstitutional Search Warrants

By Laura Berol - June 24, 2024
Court | Daily Stories | Homicides | Shooting | Suspects | Victims |

A retired Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) detective, who served as the lead investigator in Eugene Burns‘ 2015 homicide case, gave testimony on June 21 about his role in obtaining search warrants that an appeals court later found to be unconstitutional.

Burns, 32, was convicted of first-degree murder while armed, carrying a pistol without a license, and possession of a firearm during a crime of violence in 2017. The case was reopened on appeal in 2020.

Burns allegedly shot his best friend, 24-year-old Onyekachi Emmanuel Osuchukwu III, on Nov. 15, 2015, on the 2900 block of Second Street, SE.

During Friday’s hearing,, DC Superior Court Judge Marisa Demeo said Burns’ defense attorneys, Rosemary Szanyi and Jocelyn Wiesner, had filed a motion to dismiss evidence from the case.

In response to that motion, the prosecution called, as a witness, the former lead detective on the case who retired in April of 2020. 

The detective testified that he submitted affidavits to a judge in November of 2015 to obtain search warrants for cell phones the MPD obtained from witnesses at the scene of the incident. According to the detective, the judge signed the warrants ten days after the incident, and MPD officers subsequently extracted information from the phones.

The detective said he questioned additional witnesses after submitting the affidavits but before the judge signed the search warrants.

He said he didn’t revise the affidavits after the interviews because he believed the affidavits provided probable cause for searching the phones.  He said he would have revised them if the judge had declined the warrants.

In cross-examination, Wiesner asked the detective if he had heard, in March of 2020, that an appeals court had ruled the search warrants unconstitutional. 

He replied that he had not.

The detective explained that he was diagnosed with Covid-19 and placed on extended leave until his retirement a month later during that timeframe.

The prosecution announced that they plan to call a current MPD homicide detective who submitted new affidavits to search the cell phones after the first search warrants were deemed unconstitutional. 

Parties are scheduled to reconvene on June 25.