Background
On July 13, 2021, David Conner was found dead in his Charleston-area apartment with a single gunshot wound to the back of the neck. His time of death was estimated at 5:36 p.m. The apartment showed no signs of struggle and nothing had been stolen, suggesting a personal rather than random motive. The night before, Conner had called his leasing office to report a confrontation with an unidentified man who had been talking loudly on his phone in the hallway outside his apartment — Conner told management he was worried the situation was not safe.
Investigators quickly focused on Karseem Hardaway, who had been staying in a neighboring unit with his sister Tiffany. Ring doorbell footage from Tiffany’s apartment showed a young man — whom Hardaway self-identified as himself — walking in the direction of Conner’s apartment at 5:04 p.m. that day. Hardaway told detectives he left the complex immediately after that video and drove to Johns Island, but external surveillance footage showed his red Honda did not leave the complex until 5:34 p.m. — leaving a roughly 30-minute gap near the time of death. More strikingly, at 5:36 p.m. — the exact time Conner was killed — Hardaway texted Tiffany asking her children to lock up the apartment because “he had forgotten to do so after he left.” Detectives also observed Tiffany apparently delete a Ring video in their presence during a follow-up visit.
Investigators obtained four digital search warrants: a Gmail account warrant (July 19), a warrant to seize Hardaway’s cell phone (July 20), a Verizon records warrant (July 26), and a warrant to search the phone’s contents (July 30). Before trial, Hardaway moved to suppress all evidence obtained from these warrants, arguing the affidavits failed to establish probable cause and that his mere proximity to the scene was insufficient. The trial court denied the motions. The jury convicted Hardaway of murder and possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime, and he was sentenced to forty years for murder.
The Court’s Holding
Affirmed. The Court of Appeals upheld the denial of all four suppression motions. Applying Fourth Amendment principles and the two-step standard of review from State v. Frasier — factual findings reviewed for evidentiary support, ultimate legal conclusion reviewed de novo — the panel concluded the totality of circumstances gave the issuing magistrates a substantial basis for finding probable cause.
The court identified the key facts in the warrant affidavits: Hardaway self-placed himself on video walking toward the victim’s apartment at 5:04 p.m.; no other person was captured on the Ring camera between Conner’s return home and the discovery of his body; Hardaway claimed he left at 5:04 p.m. but surveillance contradicted him by 30 minutes; and at the precise moment of death, Hardaway sent a text about locking up — consistent with having just left the scene. Combined with the hallway confrontation the prior evening and Hardaway’s history of firearm-related arrests, the affidavits raised “a fair probability that evidence of Conner’s murder could be found on Hardaway’s cell phone and Gmail account.”
The court also rejected Hardaway’s argument that the trial judge applied the wrong standard. Although the court agreed the trial judge initially misstated the probable cause test, the ultimate conclusion was sound because the correct standard — whether it is reasonable to believe the items to be seized will be found in the place searched, not whether the target is suspected of a crime — was satisfied on the record before the magistrate.
Key Takeaways
- Digital search warrants in homicide investigations can be supported by circumstantial evidence alone. A combination of self-incriminating video placement, a demonstrably false alibi, a suspicious text timed to the moment of death, and prior firearms history can collectively satisfy the probable cause threshold for phone and email searches without direct evidence of the crime itself.
- The correct standard for a digital search warrant is not whether the phone’s owner committed the crime but whether there is a fair probability that evidence of the crime will be found on the device. Conflating these two inquiries is an error — but a harmless one if the facts independently satisfy the correct standard.
- Ring camera footage and cell phone location data that contradict a suspect’s own account of his movements are powerful elements in a probable cause affidavit. The 30-minute gap between Hardaway’s claimed departure time and his actual departure time, alone, shifted the probability calculus significantly.
- Defense counsel challenging digital search warrants should argue both the probable cause standard and any misapplication of it by the issuing magistrate. Even where a trial court misstates the standard, the Court of Appeals will examine whether the correct standard would nonetheless have been met on the same facts.
Why It Matters
State v. Hardaway illustrates how South Carolina courts assess probable cause for the now-common scenario of seeking warrants for smartphones and web accounts during a homicide investigation. The opinion confirms that circumstantial behavioral evidence — false statements about movements, incriminating timing of communications, surveillance footage gaps — can aggregate into probable cause for digital searches even before any direct link between the device and the crime is established.
For South Carolina criminal defense practitioners, the case underscores that motions to suppress digital search warrants must attack the affidavit holistically. Attacking individual elements (“mere presence” arguments) is unlikely to succeed when the State can point to multiple independent corroborating facts. The proper strategy is to challenge whether the combined picture — viewed from the magistrate’s perspective at the time of issuance — crosses the “fair probability” threshold, not merely to argue that any single fact is innocuous in isolation.