Prosecutors say high court ruling doesn’t overturn Bristol murder conviction

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

Trumbull County prosecutors responded Wednesday to an appeal filed by an attorney for convicted murderer Austin Burke, saying a June U.S. Supreme Court ruling on cellphone-tracking technology isn’t a reason to overturn Burke’s convictions.

The high court said law enforcement needs a court order – something Trumbull officials did not have – to obtain such data. But Trumbull officials obtained the type of permission that was required at the time of the 2017 killing, Wednesday’s filing says.

Burke, 19, of Bristolville, was sentenced in March to 47 years to life in prison for killing Brandon Sample, 22, in a rural area of Bristol Township on June 12, 2017.

A jury also found him guilty of robbing the Pizza Joe’s Restaurant in Cortland on June 20, 2017. He also was sentenced for having a plastic knife while locked up in the county jail.

Burke’s appeals attorney, Rhys Cartwright-Jones, said in his earlier filing that prosecutors relied heavily on cellphone-tracking data at Burke’s trial, mentioning it more than 100 times.

An expert witness for the state testified the cellphone data showed Burke’s cellphone traveling from Niles to Bristol Township early June 12, the morning police believe Sample was killed.

Burke’s trial attorneys asked Judge Andrew Logan of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court to suppress the cellphone data from Burke’s trial, but the judge cited case law at the time and refused.

Months after the trial, the Supreme Court ruled it was not appropriate to “grant the state unrestricted access to a wireless carrier’s database of physical location information” and ruled a court order was necessary to obtain such data.

Just after the Sample murder, law enforcement obtained a grand jury subpoena for the records, which is not a court order.

In Wednesday’s filing, Trumbull prosecutors said an Ohio appellate court has already upheld a decision by another judge to allow use of such cell-tower information under case law that existed before the Supreme Court ruling.

Furthermore, “any error was harmless, as the cell-site location information corroborated the testimony of the witnesses,” prosecutors argue.

Witnesses testified that Burke told them he killed Sample on Hatchet Man Road, which is where a Warren police detective found Sample’s body.