A defense attorney for one of the three people charged with homicide in a December 2021 shooting and stabbing death in Butler argued Friday that screen shots of text messages from a cellphone obtained by the FBI and sent to city police should not be allowed as evidence.

Prosecutors should not be allowed to use the screen shots as evidence against Hassan L.R. Brack, 38, of Huntington, because the FBI obtained them through a search warrant the agency secured for an investigation into drug and firearms trafficking, not the homicide, Brack’s attorney Rebecca Black argued before Common Pleas Court Judge Timothy McCune.

Brack; Kahlil Z.H. Rippy Jr., 25, of Butler; and Brooke R. Fair Smith, 31, of Butler, have been charged with homicide and burglary in the Dec. 5, 2021, death of Hakeem Moran, of Pittsburgh.

Moran was found with multiple stab wounds and a gunshot wound at 109 College St. in Butler and taken to Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, where he died from his injuries later that night.

In the hearing on Brack’s pretrial motion to suppress potential evidence, Black argued that language in the warrant was limited to the drug and firearms investigation, and any other evidence obtained is beyond the scope of the warrant.

The warrant does not include any probable cause related to the homicide case, she said.

McCune asked her if a person could be charged with a drug offense if the FBI had a warrant to search a home for a machine gun, but found drugs in the home.

In Brack’s case, collection of evidence related to the homicide constituted a second search that required its own warrant, Black said.

“They’re going beyond the scope of the warrant and a second search was needed,” Black said.

Assistant District Attorney Robert Zanella said the FBI used a valid warrant to obtain data from Brack’s phone, and agents knew the information they gathered from the phone was relevant to the homicide investigation.

Zanella argued the defense must show prejudice to suppress evidence when making an allegation of a procedural violation, but there was no prejudice in collecting the cellphone data relating to the homicide and the FBI is allowed to share that information with Butler police.

He said the warrant includes one and half pages of information about Brack’s connection to the homicide investigation.

During a previous hearing, Smith said she sent the messages to Brack that the FBI captured in the screen shots, Zanella said.

Black said those messages do not appear in the phones owned by Brack or Smith.

Zanella said Smith can identify the messages in court. He said those messages indicate Brack and Smith were at the scene of the homicide.

He said Brack deleted the messages, which is sign of consciousness of guilt.

FBI Special Agent Ryan Chrobak said he found the screen shots in two folders in Brack’s phone while he was conducting a narcotics investigation. The screen shots were sent from Brack’s phone to another person’s phone, he said.

Chrobak said he thought it was appropriate to send the information to Butler police.

He said phone calls mentioned in the screen shots were made using the Facebook Messenger application, so the calls were not documented in the phone’s call log.

Defense witness Mark Ganley, who said he owns a business that coordinates the delivery of digital evidence in criminal cases to federal defendants and works as a consultant in computer forensics, said he found no text messages on Brack’s or Smith’s phones from Dec. 5 or December 6.

He said people can’t delete Facebook messages they receive from someone else.

Under cross examination, Ganley said messages sent via Facebook Messenger can be deleted using the current application, but he didn’t know if the application used in 2021 allowed messages to be deleted.

He said phone calls made through Facebook messages are documented in a phone call log.

He also said individual Facebook messages can’t be deleted from a phone, but an entire thread of messages can be deleted.

McCune said he will give Zanella time to present a counter argument before issuing a ruling.