USA v. Parker

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF MINNESOTA
United States of America,
Plaintiff,
v.
Abdullahi Amin Parker,
Defendant.
Case. No. 25-cr-307 (DWF/JFD)
REPORT AND
RECOMMENDATION ON
MOTION TO SUPPRESS
EVIDENCE AND ORDER
DENYING MOTION FOR A
FRANKS HEARING
The defendant, Mr. Parker, has moved to suppress evidence found in a warranted
search of his grandfather’s home1 on 44th Avenue North in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A
threshold issue has arisen as to whether Mr. Parker has sufficiently alleged that he
personally has a protectible, Fourth Amendment, privacy interest in that apartment such
that he is legally authorized to make a suppression motion in the first place. The Court
finds that he has not and therefore recommends that his Motion to Suppress Evidence found
in the search of that apartment (Dkt. No. 23) be denied. Because Mr. Parker’s Motion for
a Franks hearing (Dkt. No. 24) attacks the same search warrant and the Court finds that
Mr. Parker cannot contest that warrant, the Court also, by Order, denies Mr. Parker’s
Motion for a Franks hearing.
1 At different points the parties refer to the apartment as belonging to Mr. Parker’s father
or Mr. Parker’s grandfather. The Court uses “grandfather” throughout, but whichever is
correct, the important point for this Report and Recommendation is that the apartment is
not Mr. Parker’s.
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In deciding this dispute, the Court has before it pre-hearing briefing on Mr. Parker’s
underlying suppression motions (Dkt. Nos. 23, 25, and 29) and pre-hearing briefing from
the United States (Dkt. No. 26) on the suppression motions. The Court also has the benefit
of supplemental briefs (requested by the Court) on whether Mr. Parker has established that
he has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the 44th Avenue apartment. These
supplemental briefs were filed by Mr. Parker (Dkt. No. 31) and the United States (Dkt. 32).
Attached to the Supplemental Brief of the United States at Docket Number 32-1 is a copy
of the application for a warrant to search the 44th Avenue apartment. That application
includes the affidavit of Saint Paul Police Department Sergeant Michael Dunaski and the
search warrant issued on the strength of that application by the Honorable Thomas J.
Conley, district judge of Minnesota’s Fourth Judicial District.
The Court limits its discussion of the facts to those needed to decide this single,
narrow issue. Sergeant Dunaski, assigned to the Saint Paul Police Department’s non-fatal
shooting investigative unit, was probing a shooting that took place outside the Minnesota
State Fair grounds just as the Fair closed for the night on Labor Day, September 2, 2024.
The facts of the case are complicated and most of the facts do not bear on whether Mr.
Parker had a protectible Fourth Amendment privacy interest in the 44th Avenue apartment.
Suffice it to say that the chronological description of Sergeant Dunaski’s investigation set
out in his search warrant application affidavit shows Sergeant Dunaski developing
information that eventually led Sergeant Dunaski to consider Mr. Parker and his younger
brother as suspects and also led Sergeant Dunaski to believe evidence would be found in
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the apartment on 44th Avenue North. (See generally Search Warrant Aff., Dkt. No. 32-1.)
When interviewed by law enforcement before the search, Mr. Parker denied living at the
44th Avenue apartment and told law enforcement multiple times that he lived in Burnsville.
(Mot. to Suppress 8, Dkt. No. 23.) Sergeant Dunaski applied for, and was issued, a warrant
to search the apartment. When police executed the warrant they found incriminating
evidence in the apartment, including three firearms, one of which appears to have been
fitted with a “switch” that allows it to be fired on fully automatic mode, a speed loader, and
a gun box. (Search Warrant Return 13, Dkt. No. 32-1 at 13.)
I. 	Legal Standards
Two legal doctrines are central to analyzing the issue before the court; (1) the Fourth
Amendment’s requirement that when law enforcement applies for a search warrant they
demonstrate a “nexus” between the contraband sought and the place to be searched and (2)
the requirement that a person cannot challenge a law enforcement search unless that person
shows that his own constitutional rights, and not just the constitutional rights of another
person, were violated.
A. Nexus
Mr. Parker argued, in a section of his pre-hearing brief headed “Lack of Nexus,”
that the warrant application made an insufficient showing of “nexus.” (Def’s Mot. to
Suppress 7, Dkt. No. 23.) The nexus requirement in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence is
the part of a probable cause analysis that requires the prosecution to demonstrate a
connection between the place to be searched and the items the police are looking for.
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“Probable cause exists if the warrant application and affidavit describe circumstances
showing a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a
particular place…” United States v. Monte-Medina, 570 F. 2d 1052, 1059 (8th Cir. 2009)
(emphasis added). The requirement that the contraband will be found somewhere specific
is often shorthanded as the “nexus” requirement. “The nexus required by the Fourth
Amendment is … ‘between the contraband [being sought] and the place to be searched.’”
United States v. Keele, 589 F. 3d 940, 943 (8th Cir. 2009) (quoting United States v. Tellez,
217 F. 3d 547, 550 (8th Cir. 2000)). See also United States v. Skarda, 845 F. 3d 370, 376
(8th Cir. 2016) (quoting the same language from Tellez). This district has recognized that
“[t]he nexus showing required by the Fourth Amendment need not be very significant,”
United States v. Rios-Uscanga, No. 16-cr-316 (RHK/KMM), 2017 WL 1534746 *3 (D.
Minn. Mar. 3, 2017). The prosecution bears the burden of establishing nexus.
B. Legitimate Privacy Interest in the Place Searched
The text of the Fourth Amendment states that it protects “the right of the people to
be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects.” U.S. Const., amend. IV (emphasis
added). Consistent with this text, a defendant in a criminal case may challenge the
admission of illegally obtained evidence only if the defendant's own constitutional rights
have been 	violated. 	See 	Rakas 	v. Illinois, 	439 U.S. 128, 133-34 (1978) 	(“Fourth
Amendment rights are personal rights which, like some other constitutional rights, may not
be vicariously asserted”) (quoting Alderman v. United States, 394 U.S. 165, 174 (1969)).
The Supreme Court has held that a person's Fourth Amendment rights are not infringed if
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that person “is aggrieved by an illegal search and seizure only through the introduction of
damaging evidence secured by a search of a third person's premises or property.” Id. at
134. The person challenging the search bears the burden of establishing a subjective
expectation of privacy and that the expectation is objectively reasonable. Minnesota v.
Carter, 525 U.S. 83, 88 (1998) (“[I]n order to claim the protection of the Fourth
Amendment, a defendant must demonstrate that he personally has an expectation of privacy
in the place searched, and that his expectation is reasonable”) (citing Rakas, 439 U.S. at
143-44).
While usually the requirement of a reasonable expectation of privacy requires that
it be the defendant’s own home that is searched in order for the defendant to be able to
challenge the search, there are limited circumstances in which one can have a legitimate
expectation of privacy in someone else’s home. In Minnesota v. Olson, 495 U.S. 91, 98
(1990), the Supreme Court held that an overnight guest in a home has the sort of reasonable
expectation of privacy that the Fourth Amendment protects. Persons present in a home for
commercial purposes, however, do not. Minnesota v. Carter, 525 U.S. 83, 90 (1998).
The person seeking to challenge the constitutionality of a law enforcement search
has the burden of showing, from facts in the record, that they had the sort of relationship
with a residence that gives rise to a Fourth Amendment-protectible interest in that place.
United States v. Perry, 548 F. 3d 688, 691 (8 th Cir. 2008). Under the current state of Eighth
Circuit law, that means they must show that they either owned or rented the residence, or
that they were an overnight guest in the residence.
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II. 	Analysis
Mr. Parker first expresses the nexus requirement correctly, (“A finding of probable
cause requires a search warrant affidavit to establish a nexus between contraband or
evidence of a crime and the place to be searched”) (Dkt. No. 23 at 7)), but then immediately
and without citation to authority misstates the nexus doctrine as a requirement that there
be a connection between the place to be searched and the defendant. (Id. at 8) (“Because
suspicion that an individual committed a crime does not, on its own, establish probable
cause to search that person’s home, police must establish that the suspect actually lives at
the premises to be searched in order to prove nexus”). Mr. Parker then devotes nearly a
page of his motion to minimizing his connection to the 44th Avenue apartment and never
returns to his initial, correct framing of the nexus requirement:
Here, there is a question of whether Parker actually lives at the
premises 	being 	searched, which is his 	father’s apartment. 	During his
interview with the police, Mr. Parker repeatedly stated that he lived in
Burnsville, not at his father’s residence in Minneapolis.
(Id.) Mr. Parker concludes his argument by writing that “[f]ailure to provide such
information [that the suspect lives in the residence that the police are applying for a warrant
to search] is fatal to a probable-cause presentation.” (Id.) In a later brief, Mr. Parker re-
emphasized his lack of connection to his grandfather’s apartment, characterizing his
connection to the apartment as “loose” and saying that “there is no compelling evidence
that the defendant actually lives at his father’s residence rather than in Burnsville.” (Dkt.
No. 29 at 3.)
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By arguing that there is little or no evidence that Mr. Parker is connected to the
apartment, Mr. Parker undercuts any claim he has to a legitimate, Fourth Amendment-
protectible privacy interest in the 44th Avenue apartment. Mr. Parker’s citation of United
States v. Frangenberg, 15 F. 3d 100, 102 (8th Cir. 1994) is misplaced, because that case
does not stand for the proposition that the prosecution can show nexus by showing that the
suspect actually lives in the premises searched. At best, it appears that the district court
decision appealed from in Frangenberg might have held that a protectible Fourth
Amendment interest in the place to be searched is needed before a challenge to a search of
that place will be heard, but even that is not part of the Eighth Circuit’s holding.2
At the truncated motions hearing on November 14, 2025, Mr. Parker’s attorney
clarified that he meant to say that Mr. Parker had a protectible Fourth Amendment interest
in the 44th Avenue apartment, but that the warrant application lacked probable cause
because it failed to demonstrate nexus. Mr. Parker later gave a more thorough version of
this argument in his supplemental brief on standing. As the undersigned understands it, part
of Mr. Parker’s argument against probable cause is that Mr. Parker read the warrant
application as trying to show probable cause by establishing two premises: first, that Mr.
2 There were two defendants in the Frangenberg case. The issue on appeal was whether a
warrant to search a particular house was supported by probable cause. In an introductory
paragraph setting the context for the dispute before it, the Eighth Circuit noted that the
district court suppressed evidence as to the defendant who lived in the house, but not as to
the defendant who was simply visiting the house, and that this was because the defendant
who was just visiting “lacked standing to challenge the search.” 15 F. 3d at 101. But the
Eighth Circuit’s opinion, as noted, is not about standing (for that matter, neither is it about
nexus) and the statement quoted in the preceding sentence of this footnote is not a part of
the Frangenberg Court’s holding.
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Parker possessed firearms and second, that he frequented the 44th Avenue apartment. From
these two premises, again according to Mr. Parker’s account, the prosecution asserts that
the conclusion follows that there was probable cause to believe that firearms were in the
apartment. If, Mr. Parker’s argument continues, the evidence set out in the warrant
application 	for 	the 	second 	premise—that 	Mr. 	Parker 	frequents 	the 	apartment—is
inadequate, then the conclusion does not follow and therefore the warrant to search the
apartment does not establish probable cause to believe firearms are in the apartment.
In asking the Court to recast his argument, Mr. Parker asks too much. He wishes
this Court to find that on the facts in the record the prosecution has failed to prove that Mr.
Parker lives at the 44th Avenue apartment, but that the very same record facts show that he
himself has proven that he has a sufficient connection to the apartment to give him a
legitimate expectation of privacy in the apartment. Recalling that the defendant in a
criminal case must establish his legitimate expectation of privacy by facts in the record,
the claim that the record facts show the truth of two opposite conclusions is untenable.
Either those facts support the conclusion that Mr. Parker lived at the apartment, or they
support the conclusion that Mr. Parker did not live at the apartment. It can be one or the
other, but it cannot be both. Mr. Parker, because of his misapprehension of the nexus
requirement, has stated several times that the facts in the record are insufficient to show
that he lived at the apartment on 44th Avenue.
Although Mr. Parker did not attempt, in his opening brief, to show that he had a
legitimate expectation of privacy in that apartment, in his supplemental brief filed after the
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attempted motions hearing of November 14, he asserted that facts outside the record would
show that he was employed as a personal care attendant and frequented the apartment in
that capacity. (Dkt. No. 31 at 2-3.) He also asserts that he several times stayed overnight at
the apartment, although he does not provide any details about how frequently he stayed
overnight or when it was that he stayed overnight, and in any event he characterizes his
overnight stays as always part and parcel of his work as a personal care attendant:
Mr. Parker has worked as his grandfather’s Personal Care Attendant since
March 2024, a full year before the search warrant was executed. Throughout
this one-year period, Mr. Parker routinely visited his grandfather at his
Minneapolis residence to provide care and companionship. During these
visits, Mr. Parker would sometimes stay overnight at his grandfather’s
residence.
(Dkt. No. 31 at 2–3) (emphasis added).
Finally, Mr. Parker asserts that when the police searched the apartment, they found
his clothes, passport, and identification card in the apartment. (Id.) Although not cited by
Mr. Parker, the United States notes that Mr. Parker’s probation officer considered him to
reside at the apartment (Dkt. No. 26 at 14), and that police surveillance saw Mr. Parker
coming and going from the apartment building (although Sergeant Dunaski’s search
warrant affidavit never says that Mr. Parker was observed to stay overnight). (Dkt. No. 32-
1 at 6.)
Mr. Parker’s proffer of evidence that is not in the record raises two related questions.
First, if these facts were established at a hearing, would they suffice to give Mr. Parker a
legitimate expectation of privacy in the 44th Avenue apartment? Second, if they would,
should the Court convene a hearing to give Mr. Parker an opportunity to supplement the
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record? The Court finds that the first question should be answered in the negative and that
therefore the second question need not be answered.
Being a personal care attendant who goes in and out of a residence does not give the
personal care attendant a legitimate expectation of privacy in that residence. If this were
the law, any business visitor – a repair person, a salesperson, a census taker – could claim
a legitimate expectation of privacy in a place they went to solely for work. Minnesota v.
Carter, 525 U.S. 83, 90 (1998), held that a person present on premises for commercial
purposes does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in those premises. An overnight
visitor, however, does have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the place they stay
overnight. Minnesota v. Olson, 495 U.S. 91, 98 (1990). While Mr. Parker does claim he
spent the night at the apartment, he does not specify how frequently this happened, he does
not say when this happened closest in time to the search, and he casts his overnight stays
(as noted above) as a component of his work as a personal care attendant. Also, as described
earlier, Mr. Parker denied to the police living at the apartment and while Sergeant Dunaski
related surveillance evidence that definitely showed Mr. Parker at the apartment, there is
before the Court no evidence that Sergeant Dunaski ever related an observation of Mr.
Parker being at the apartment overnight.
Mr. Parker claims that his ability to come and go from the apartment, apparently at
will, should also be considered by the Court, because “Courts have found that consistent
and unrestricted access, such as being observed coming and going at will, sufficiently
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demonstrates a defendant’s ability to regulate access to the property.”3 The case he cites
for this proposition, however, actually held that it is the ability to exclude others from the
property, not an ability to come and go oneself, that is probative of possession and control
of an item of property. United States v. Feye, 568 F. Supp. 962, 974 (N.D. Iowa 2021).
Lastly, Mr. Parker asks the Court to consider that the police found some of his
personal property in the apartment. Mr. Parker cites no authority for the proposition that
the presence of his personal property in a place supports an inference that he has a
legitimate expectation of privacy in that place. While only a few courts seem to have
written opinions in cases in which a defendant claims the presence of his personal property
to be evidence that supports a claimed privacy interest, those courts have been dismissive
of the claim. See generally United States v. Tamborello, No. CR 10-0028, 2010 WL
2802603 *2-3 (N.D. Ia. July 15, 2010); United States v. Lane, No. 8:08CR137, 2008 WL
3876194 *1-2 (D. Neb. Aug. 18, 2008).
It is Mr. Parker’s burden to establish that he has a legitimate expectation of privacy
in the place searched. He has not met his burden. He affirmatively undercut his claim that
he has a Fourth Amendment-protectible interest in the apartment when he claimed in his
Motion and in a later brief that the record facts were insufficient to show that he lived in
the apartment, and when he at first said nothing at all about being an overnight guest in the
3 This argument contradicts an argument Mr. Parker made earlier, Mr. Parker had argued
that “the fact that the defendant was observed driving to the residence during police
surveillance is insufficient to establish nexus [which Mr. Parker understood to be a showing
that he lived at the apartment] because the defendant could have simply been visiting his
family members who live at the residence.”
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apartment. Even if all the facts in both his briefs that favor Mr. Parker were assumed to
have been established, they would not amount to facts sufficient to show a legitimate
expectation of privacy. The apartment is not Mr. Parker’s, but his grandfather’s; Mr.
Parker’s status as a personal care attendant who visited the apartment for work does not
confer standing on him; his post-hearing supplemental briefing does claim that he stayed
overnight in the apartment, but in his capacity as a personal care attendant and without
saying when or how frequently he stayed overnight. His arguments based on access
misapprehend the governing law, and his arguments based on his personal possessions
being in the apartment do not find support in the caselaw. In short, even if every fact
proffered by Mr. Parker was established at a hearing, they would not be sufficient to show
that Mr. Parker had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the apartment.
The undersigned respectfully recommends that Mr. Parker’s motion to suppress
evidence found in the apartment on 44th Avenue North be denied because Mr. Parker does
not have a legitimate expectation of privacy in that apartment.
Motion for a Franks Hearing
In Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154, 164, 171 (1978), the Supreme Court held that
in certain circumstances the presumption of validity of an affidavit supporting a search
warrant could be overcome and a person challenging a law enforcement search could
“attack the veracity of a warrant affidavit after the warrant has been issued and executed”
at a hearing. The hearing would be convened “where the defendant makes a substantial
preliminary showing that a false statement knowingly and intentionally, or with reckless
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disregard for the truth, was included by the affiant in the warrant affidavit and if the
allegedly false statement is necessary to the finding of probable cause, the Fourth
Amendment requires that a hearing be held at the defendant’s request.” Franks, 438 U.S.
at 155-156. If, after a hearing, the defendant has shown by a preponderance of the evidence
that the warrant affidavit contains material false statements or material omissions, and if,
with the false statements corrected or the omissions supplied, the warrant affidavit no
longer shows probable cause, “the warrant must be voided and the fruits of the search
excluded.” Id.
Here, the Court recommends that Mr. Parker’s challenge to the warranted search of
his grandfather’s apartment be denied because Mr. Parker has failed to show that he,
personally, has a constitutionally-protected privacy interest in that apartment. This
recommendation, if adopted by the district judge, is sufficient to dispose of Mr. Parker’s
Motion for a Franks hearing because that Motion is directed at the same search warrant,
the one the police used to search the apartment of Mr. Parker’s grandfather.
The Motion for a Franks hearing is denied.
This leaves only Mr. Parker’s Motion for disclosure of informants. (Dkt. No. 22.)
Having reviewed that Motion and the Response by the United States, the Court concludes
that no hearing is needed on that Motion, which is taken under advisement on the papers
as of today’s date.
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CONCLUSION
Accordingly, based on all the files, records, and proceedings herein, IT IS
ORDERED THAT:
1. 	Mr. Parker’s Motion for a Franks Hearing (Dkt. No. 24) is DENIED; and
2. 	Mr. Parker’s Motion for Disclosure of Informants (Dkt. No. 22) is taken under
advisement on the papers as of today’s date. An Order will issue in due course.
Further, IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT: Mr. Parker’s Motion to Suppress Evidence
(Dkt. No. 23) be DENIED, as Mr. Parker has not met his burden of demonstrating that his
own constitutional rights were potentially violated when the police searched the apartment
on 44th Avenue North in Minneapolis.
Dated: December 3, 2025 	s/ John F. Docherty
JOHN F. DOCHERTY
United States Magistrate Judge
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