LENON v. STATE (2026)

In October 2022, Angelo Lenon was convicted of two counts of malice murder, felony murder, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony related to the shooting deaths of Daishone Flagg, Jeremie Tyson, and Andrew Barkley. He appeals his convictions, arguing that trial counsel provided ineffective assistance by failing to move to suppress evidence gathered from Lenon's two cell phones on the ground that the warrants authorizing the searches of the phones were overbroad. Because Lenon has failed to show that his counsel was deficient in this way, we affirm his convictions.¹

1. Evidence presented at Lenon's trial showed the following. Lenon and Barkley conspired to steal drugs from an apartment on the night of March 13, 2019. Flagg and Tyson were in the apartment, and Barkley and Lenon shot them after entering the apartment. Tyson returned fire, hitting Barkley. Lenon ran from the apartment and was arrested four days later, after Barkley's girlfriend shared with police officers the details Lenon gave her about the shooting. Flagg, Tyson, and Barkley died from their injuries.

At Lenon's trial, the State introduced evidence gathered from Lenon's two cell phones pursuant to search warrants.² This evidence included data showing that: the phones were near the crime scene before the shooting; location tracking was turned off both phones around the time of the shooting; the phones were moving quickly at the time Tyson called 911 reporting the shooting; messages and a picture sent to Barkley's phone from one of the phones when planning the robbery were deleted from that phone; and in the days following the shooting, internet searches were conducted on the phones for “lakes near me” and for news articles about a “triple shooting” in DeKalb County. Although Lenon objected to the admission of some of this evidence on the basis of relevance, foundation, and hearsay, Lenon did not object to the admission of any of this evidence on the ground that the search warrants were overbroad.

2. Lenon argues on appeal that his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance by failing to move to suppress the evidence gathered from his cell phones pursuant to search warrants on the ground that the search warrants were overbroad. To succeed on this claim, Lenon must show that trial counsel's performance was deficient and that he suffered prejudice as a result. See Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984). Because an appellant must satisfy both parts of the Strickland test to prevail, if the appellant fails to meet one part of the test, we need not examine the other. Jackson v. State, 324 Ga. 11, 14, 928 S.E.2d 52 (2026).

To establish deficient performance, Lenon must show that his trial counsel performed his duties in an objectively unreasonable way. See Strickland, 466 U.S. at 687–90, 104 S.Ct. 2052. “Where, as here, an appellant claims that trial counsel was deficient for failing to file a motion to suppress, the appellant must make a strong showing that the damaging evidence would have been suppressed had counsel made the motion.” Pugh v. State, 318 Ga. 706, 720, 899 S.E.2d 653 (2024) (cleaned up). In determining whether an appellant has made this showing, “we ask whether a motion to suppress on the specific basis proposed by the appellant would clearly have succeeded,” and we consider whether the argument proposed by the appellant “was supported by binding appellate precedent at the time of trial.” Id. (cleaned up). Counsel is not deficient for failing to advance a legal theory that would “require an extension of existing precedents.” Esprit v. State, 305 Ga. 429, 438, 826 S.E.2d 7 (2019).

(a) The search warrants for each of Lenon's two phones alleged that “Murder, OCGA § 16-5-1,” had been committed; described each phone; and stated that the phones had “been used in the commission of the crime(s) herein described” and that the phones had “tangible evidence of the commission of the crime(s) set forth above.”³ The warrants further stated:

A complete forensic extraction [of the phone] is to be completed. A search and report is to be generated for the following:

For the time period of 1/01/2019 through 3/19/2019, which is evidence of the aforementioned crime, which is subject to search and seizure under OCGA § 17-5-21:

1. Website and browser history;

2. Search history—All search history and queries including by way of example and not limitation, such as World Wide Web, images, news, shopping, advertising, videos, maps, travel, and finance;

3. Operating system files and information;

4. Geolocation data, and any data stored showing movement or location of the device;

5. Visual and audio media created, accessed modified and/or deleted during this time period;

6. Any passwords stored on the device used for any applications[.]

Both the warrant and the affidavit supporting the warrant included a paragraph explaining that “searching for and seizing information from computers often requires officers to search and examine most or all data and/or files from digital storage devices” because these devices can store a large amount of data and “a suspect may try to conceal criminal evidence; he or she might store it in random order with deceptive file names or hide data in seemingly innocuous and unrelated files.” The warrant then instructed the officers “to immediately search the above-described account for and seize the above list of specifically described items.”

The affidavits supporting the warrants listed “Case-Specific Facts Establishing Probable Cause,” which included that Barkley's girlfriend said that the morning after the shooting, she received a call from Lenon, explaining what happened during the shooting; that Barkley's girlfriend “provided police with text message communications” between Barkley and Lenon “in the days leading up to and through March 13, 2019, where the planned robbery was discussed”; and that Lenon sent Barkley “a screen shot of suspected narcotics from an Instagram page.”⁴

At Lenon's trial, a cell-phone analyst testified that the extraction she performed on the phones “shows everything that you may see on a phone” and explained that then she “look[ed] at everything that [she could] within the scope of the search warrant.” At the motion for new trial hearing, Lenon's trial counsel testified that he did not file a motion to suppress the evidence gathered based on the warrants because he “didn't feel like there was enough to support” such a motion.

(b) The thrust of Lenon's argument on appeal seems to be that counsel provided ineffective assistance by not arguing that the search warrants were overbroad because, although the warrants may have ostensibly limited the data to be searched and seized, the fact that the warrants permitted a “complete forensic extraction” means that the search was not properly limited under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

This claim fails because Lenon has not cited, nor have we found, any binding precedent holding that a warrant authorizing an extraction of all of a phone's data to allow investigators to search and seize specific data violates the Fourth Amendment. To the contrary, federal courts of appeals have allowed broad data extractions as part of executing search warrants of electronic devices like cell phones.⁵ See, e.g., United States v. Palms, 21 F.4th 689, 701 (10th Cir. 2021) (holding that although the “byte-for-byte copy of the hard drive ․ captured information beyond the scope of the warrant,” the search was not unreasonable because “the broad extraction was consistent with the reality that evidence of the crime could be found in various file types”); United States v. Flores, 802 F.3d 1028, 1044–45 (9th Cir. 2015) (“Over-seizing is an accepted reality in electronic searching because there is no way to be sure exactly what an electronic file contains without somehow examining its contents.”).⁶

Because there is no binding legal precedent supporting the merits of Lenon's argument, he has not established that trial counsel was deficient in failing to argue that the warrants were overbroad on the basis of the data extraction they permitted. See Pugh, 318 Ga. at 722, 899 S.E.2d 653 (“Trial counsel ․ cannot be deemed ineffective for failing to argue precedent that was not in existence at the time of the trial.” (cleaned up)); Moss v. State, 322 Ga. 757, 768, 922 S.E.2d 56 (2025) (holding that trial counsel was not deficient in failing to file a motion to suppress the cell phone evidence gathered based on a search warrant because “we are aware of no precedent—and [the appellant] cites none” supporting his argument that the warrant lacked particularity because it had an unlimited date range and a limited catch-all clause).

(c) Construing Lenon's appellate brief generously, it could be interpreted as raising two additional ineffective assistance arguments, both of which fail because he has not shown that a motion on either basis would “clearly have succeeded,” meaning he has failed to show that counsel's performance was deficient. See Pugh, 318 Ga. at 720, 899 S.E.2d 653.

(i) To the extent Lenon is asserting that trial counsel provided ineffective assistance by not arguing that the warrants were impermissible general warrants because the authorized search was not sufficiently limited, that claim fails. The warrants did not authorize the search and seizure of “any and all” data, and instead linked the data sought to the charged crime and limited the search to six specific categories of data for a specific time period. Cf. State v. Wilson, 315 Ga. 613, 615–16, 884 S.E.2d 298 (2023) (holding that a warrant that “broadly authorize[d] the seizure of ‘any and all stored electronic information’ on the phones ․ authorized an impermissible general search”). Thus, the warrants are distinguishable from the impermissible general warrant in Wilson that “expressly authorized the seizure, without limitation, of ‘any and all stored electronic information,’ ” and Lenon has failed to show that a motion to suppress on this ground would clearly have succeeded. Pugh, 318 Ga. at 722, 899 S.E.2d 653 (holding that the appellant failed to show that a motion to suppress based on an argument that the warrant was “general warrant” would “clearly have succeeded” because, unlike the warrant in Wilson, the warrant in Pugh “identified 18 separate categories of items” and “certain categories ․ [were] limited by time or by reference to the specific crime under investigation”).⁷ See also Perez v. State, 316 Ga. 433, 447, 888 S.E.2d 526 (2023) (rejecting the appellant's claim of overbreadth where “the warrant did not simply provide an unbounded description authorizing the search and seizure of any and all data on the cell phone, without linking that data to the crimes at issue”).

(ii) To the extent Lenon is asserting that counsel provided ineffective assistance by not arguing that the scope of the warrant was too broad because the warrant improperly allowed the search and seizure of “all data” on his phone based only on a “boilerplate statement” that criminals use cell phones for crime, this claim also fails. As shown above, Lenon's description of the warrant as an “all data” warrant that was based only on a “boilerplate statement” is incorrect. The record shows that the search authorized by the warrants was limited to six specific categories of data,⁸ and the affidavits supporting the warrants included case-specific statements indicating that Lenon used his phone to plan the crime and made a call with it after the crime to give Barkley's girlfriend details of the crime. Because Lenon has not shown that a motion to suppress on this ground would have succeeded, his claim fails. See Pugh, 318 Ga. at 715, 899 S.E.2d 653 (“The facts in the affidavit indicated that Pugh was using his cell phone around the time of the murder ․. From these facts, the magistrate could reasonably infer that Pugh's cell phone records would contain information about his communications and whereabouts around the time of the crime, which, logically, could provide evidence of his involvement in [the victim's] murder.”).

Judgment affirmed.

FOOTNOTES

1.   Flagg, Tyson, and Barkley were killed in March 2019. In June 2019, a DeKalb County grand jury indicted Lenon for two counts of malice murder, three counts of felony murder, conspiracy to commit armed robbery, home invasion, burglary, two counts of aggravated assault, possession of a firearm by a first offender probationer, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. At a jury trial in April and May 2022, the jury found Lenon not guilty of home invasion and burglary and was not able to reach a verdict on the other counts. Lenon was retried for those counts in October 2022 and was found guilty on all remaining counts. In November 2022, the trial court sentenced Lenon to serve life in prison without the possibility of parole for each malice murder count (based on Flagg and Tyson), life in prison for the felony murder count based on Barkley, and five years in prison for the count of firearm possession during a felony. The court vacated or merged the remaining counts. Lenon filed a timely motion for new trial, which he amended with new counsel in July 2025. After an evidentiary hearing, the trial court denied Lenon's motion in December 2025. Lenon filed a timely notice of appeal. The appeal was docketed to this Court's April 2026 term and submitted for a decision on the briefs.

2.   The two phones were seized from Lenon when he was arrested.

3.   Except for the difference in the descriptions of the phone to be searched, the warrants and supporting affidavits for the two phones are identical to each other.

4.   The affidavits also indicated that oral testimony was given under oath in support of the warrants, but that testimony is not in the record.

5.   On questions of federal law, we can “look to the decisions” of federal courts of appeal “as persuasive authority,” although they are not binding on this Court. See Green v. State, 318 Ga. 610, 619, 898 S.E.2d 500 (2024).

6.   Similarly, in the context of a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, our Court of Appeals rejected an “argument that the search warrant should have limited the digital download to only extracting data from [the relevant dates]” because the argument was “based upon [the appellant's] mere speculation that such a procedure existed and was available to the detective ․ and such speculation is insufficient to support a claim of ineffective assistance.” See Reyes-Castro v. State, 352 Ga. App. 48, 62, 833 S.E.2d 735 (2019). Here, Lenon has offered no evidence or even speculation that a more targeted extraction was available.Moreover, Lenon does not argue that that the scope of the search actually conducted by the officers exceeded the bounds of the warrant. As to how the search warrants were executed, the cell phone analyst testified that after performing the extraction, she limited her search to “look at everything that [she could] within the scope of the search warrant.” (emphasis added). See Palms, 21 F.4th at 701 (holding that the search was reasonable where “[t]he search of the extracted files ․ proceeded with the focus on files that might contain evidence of [the alleged crime,]” and if a file viewed by the officer “did not contain relevant evidence, the officers moved on immediately”).

7.   Moreover, to the extent Lenon is arguing that his counsel should have filed a motion to suppress relying on Wilson, such a claim fails because Wilson was decided after Lenon's 2022 trial, “so his trial counsel would not have been able to rely on Wilson” in challenging the warrant. Pugh, 318 Ga. at 721, 899 S.E.2d 653 (2024).

8.   Lenon does not argue that any specific categories in the list of six were not supported by probable cause.

Warren, Presiding Justice.

All the Justices concur.