Federal prosecutors have dismissed a criminal case against a Westbrook man who was the subject of yearslong warrantless police surveillance.
The dismissal came about two weeks after Maine District Court Judge Lance Walker ruled that Willie Banks was entitled to a hearing over whether the secretive surveillance through a neighbor’s camera violated the man’s constitutional rights, potentially jeopardizing the felony gun case against him.
Banks’ federal defender, Heather Gonzales, who only discovered the surveillance this spring as she was preparing for trial and asked the court to sanction prosecutors for not revealing it sooner; had she known, she would have previously argued the police needed a warrant and the case needed to be thrown out.
“Because the government’s failure to disclose the document in a timely fashion has undermined its singular goal of pursuing a fair and just resolution in every criminal case, the government submits that the continued prosecution of the defendant is no longer in the interests of justice and, therefore, moves for leave to dismiss the indictment with prejudice,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Benson wrote in a court filing dismissing the case.
The dismissal means the court will no longer weigh the legality of the warrantless surveillance conducted on Banks, who was charged in connection with a shooting at his Cumberland Street apartment building in March 2024.
In this case, which was first reported by the Bangor Daily News in May, a Maine Drug Enforcement Agency officer had secretly monitored Banks through a camera installed at his neighbor’s house for more than three years. Experts called it an especially lengthy example of warrantless surveillance, which is covered by an evolving and unsettled part of the law.
Earlier this month, Walker wrote that prosecutors’ failure to disclose that police had conducted longterm, on-demand, technology-assisted monitoring of Banks’ home meant that previous rulings in the case had been decided on a record that was “materially incomplete.”
His order vacated a prior ruling that had denied an effort by Banks to toss evidence in the case, which rested on surveillance footage that police used to search him home and arrest him for illegally possessing a firearm.
Had prosecutors not moved to dismiss, Gonzales would have been allowed to renew her effort to exclude the camera footage in the case, this time under the argument that police obtained it in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on warrantless searches.
