Order — United States v. Jemel Xavier Williams (N.D. Ga., Dkt. 75, November 10, 2025)

Summary

In United States v. Jemel Xavier Williams, Victoria Marie Calvert, United States District Judge, reviews the Non-Final Report & Recommendation (Doc. 48) and the Final Report & Recommendation (Doc. 66) of United States Magistrate Judge Catherine M. Salinas. The indictment charges Williams with possessing a firearm on February 29, 2024, knowing of a previous felony conviction. Williams objected to the recommended denial of the motion to suppress evidence from the vehicle inventory search. The Court assumes Sergeant Cooper had an improper motive but finds the officers also had a valid motive to impound the vehicle. The Court overrules the objections, adopts both recommendations, denies the motions to dismiss the indictment and to suppress evidence, and grants in part the motion to suppress statements.

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     Case 1:24-cr-00220-VMC-CMS    Document 75     Filed 11/10/25   Page 1 of 6




                IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
               FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF GEORGIA
                         ATLANTA DIVISION

 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

        v.
                                                Criminal Action No.
 JEMEL XAVIER WILLIAMS,                         1:24-cr-00220-VMC

        Defendant.

                                    ORDER

       This matter is before the Court on the Non-Final Report & Recommendation

(“R&R”) (Doc. 48) issued on May 6, 2025, and the Final Report & Recommendation

(Doc. 66) issued on August 18, 2025 by the Honorable Catherine M. Salinas, United

States Magistrate Judge.

I.     Background

       The Court incorporates the Magistrate Judge’s factual background and legal

standard sections from the two R&Rs by reference to the extent no objections were

filed to them. On July 9, 2024, the grand jury returned an indictment charging

Defendant Jemel Xavier Williams with possessing a firearm on February 29, 2024,

knowing that he had previously been convicted of a felony offense, in violation of

18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). (Doc. 1). Mr. Williams filed a motion to suppress evidence

(Doc. 23), motion to suppress statements (Doc. 24), and motion to dismiss

indictment. (Doc. 25). The Magistrate Judge held an evidentiary hearing (Docs. 29,
      Case 1:24-cr-00220-VMC-CMS      Document 75     Filed 11/10/25   Page 2 of 6




32) and heard oral argument (Docs. 53, 62) on the motions to suppress and

permitted briefing from the parties on all three motions. (Docs. 34, 37–38, 42–46).

The Magistrate Judge recommended denying the motion to dismiss indictment,

denying the motion to suppress evidence, and granting in part the motion to

suppress statements. Mr. Williams timely objected to the recommended denial of

his motion to suppress evidence. (Doc. 71).

II.     Discussion

        A.    Standard of Review

        The district court reviewing an R&R “shall make a de novo determination of

those portions of the report or specified proposed findings or recommendations to

which objection is made.” 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(C). A party objecting to a R&R

“must specifically identify those findings objected to. Frivolous, conclusive, or

general objections need not be considered by the district court.” Marsden v. Moore,

847 F.2d 1536, 1548 (11th Cir. 1988). If neither party objects, the district judge need

only review the R&R for clear error and “may accept, reject, or modify, in whole

or in part, the findings or recommendations made by the magistrate judge.” 1 28

U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(C).


1 Mr. Williams initially objected to the Magistrate Judge’s recommendation that

his motion to dismiss indictment be denied (Doc. 51); however, he later conceded
that binding precedent required the Court to adopt the Magistrate Judge’s
recommendation (Doc. 52). Additionally, neither Mr. Williams nor the
Government objected to the Magistrate Judge’s recommendation that Mr.
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      B.     Mr. Williams’s Objections

      Mr. Williams objects to the R&R’s recommendation that his motion to

suppress evidence be denied, arguing that the officers were improperly motivated

to search his vehicle by his federal probation status, thus rendering the inventory

search of his vehicle unconstitutional. (Doc. 71 at 12).

      Before reaching Mr. Williams’s objections, the Court first agrees with the

Magistrate Judge that Mr. Williams’s vehicle did not have valid registration and

that there was no confirmation that it had valid insurance. Without these items, no

one could have lawfully driven the vehicle, and so in the abstract it was proper for

the officers to conduct an inventory search prior to impounding it. However, Mr.

Williams argues that in this specific case, Sergeant Cooper’s improper motive of

wanting to find incriminating evidence rendered the inventory search illegal.

      Mr. Williams acknowledges that an expectation of finding evidence alone

would not raise constitutional concerns, but that an improper motivation to

conduct an investigatory search would render the resulting inventory search

unconstitutional. Rather than deciding whether Sergeant Cooper was acting based




Williams’s motion to suppress statements be granted in part. The Court has
reviewed the Magistrate Judge’s Report & Recommendations on these motions for
clear error and finds none.

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on an expectation of what he would find or an improper motivation to search, 2 the

Court will assume that Sergeant Cooper was motivated by the improper purpose

of finding incriminating evidence. But even with that assumption, the Court does

not agree that the inventory search was unconstitutional.

      Mr. Williams argues that the case law frames the issue of motive to conduct

an inventory search in either/or terms. However, the Court agrees with the

Magistrate Judge that an inventory search is illegal if it is solely based on an

improper motive. (Doc. 66 at 15) (citing Sammons v. Taylor, 967 F.3d 1533, 1543

(11th Cir. 1992) (decision to impound is “in good faith, based upon standard

criteria, and not solely based upon suspicion of evidence of criminal activity”) and

United States v. Isaac, 987 F.3d 980, 989 (11th Cir. 2021) (same)). In other words, an

inventory search that is motivated by finding incriminating evidence is still legal

if there is also another proper motive for the inventory search. See United States v.

Harvey, No: 3:21-cr-00019-TCB-RGV, 2022 WL 16579328, at *7 (N.D. Ga. Oct. 7,

2022), report and recommendation adopted, No: 3:21-cr-00019-TCB-RGV, 2022 WL

16574806 (N.D. Ga. Nov. 1, 2022) (citing United States v. Orozco, 715 F.2d 158, 161




2 The Court is not sure there is always a distinction between expectation and

motive, particularly where there was no plan for the police to encounter Mr.
Williams, as there was in the case Mr. Williams relies on to explain the distinction.
(See Doc. 71 at 13) (quoting Commonwealth v. Ortiz, 39 N.E.3d 458, 461–62 (Mass.
App. Ct. 2015)).
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(5th Cir. 1983); United States v. Daniels, No. 1:13-cr-454-WSD, 2015 WL 533253, at

*14 (N.D. Ga. Feb. 9, 2015)).

      Turning to the evidence here, the Court finds that in addition to any

improper search for evidence, the officers were also motivated by the fact that they

needed to do an inventory search prior to impounding Mr. Williams’s vehicle.

Although Sergeant Cooper said that the officers needed to make sure there were

no weapons in Mr. Williams’s vehicle, Officer Taylor did not agree with Sergeant

Cooper’s assessment until he learned that there was no insurance on the vehicle

and another officer pointed out that Officer Taylor had seen the unregistered

vehicle on the road. And even though Sergeant Cooper said Mr. Williams was on

federal probation, he prefaced that statement by saying “that [vehicle] is 85,”

meaning the vehicle needed to be impounded. (Doc. 32 at 50). As noted above,

there was no need to wait for the insurance to come back because Mr. Williams’s

vehicle was subject to impoundment for never having been registered in Georgia. 3

(Id. at 52, 58; see also Doc. 34-4 (authorizing officers to impound a vehicle that is

improperly registered in violation of OCGA 40-2-8)). Thus, the Court agrees with



3 For this reason, the Court also agrees with the Magistrate Judge that “[i]mpound,

and the accompanying inventory, was inevitable.” (Doc. 66 at 17). To be clear, this
finding is not related to the inevitable discovery doctrine (Doc. 71 at 12 n.9).
Instead, the Court agrees that Officer Taylor could have decided to impound the
unregistered vehicle as soon as he encountered Mr. Williams driving it, and the
same evidence would have invariably been discovered.
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the Magistrate Judge that because the officers, including Sergeant Cooper, had a

valid motive to impound Mr. Williams’s vehicle, their inventory search was

constitutional.

III.     Conclusion

         For the foregoing reasons, the Court OVERRULES Mr. Williams’s

objections (Doc. 71) and ADOPTS the Non-Final Report & Recommendation (Doc.

48) and the Final Report & Recommendation (Doc. 66) in its entirety as the Order

of the Court. Mr. Williams’s motion to dismiss indictment (Doc. 25) and motion to

suppress evidence (Doc. 23) are DENIED. Mr. Williams’s motion to suppress

statements (Doc. 24) is GRANTED IN PART as to the statements he made while

under arrest in the back of the police cruiser.

         SO ORDERED this 10th day of November, 2025.


                                              _______________________________
                                              Victoria Marie Calvert
                                              United States District Judge




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