SCOTUS rules on warrantless searches of cellphones

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On June 25, 2014, the United States Supreme Court addressed the issue of warrantless searches of cell phones in its opinion of Riley v. California.  The ruling in Riley comes from two separate cases involving the search of cellphones of criminal defendants during a search incident to their arrest.

In the first case, the Petitioner, Riley, was stopped by a police officer for expired registration tags and learned in the course of the arrest that the Petitioner’s license was suspended.  The Petitioner’s vehicle was impounded and an inventory made of the contents. The Petitioner was arrested for possession of concealed and loaded firearms found inside the vehicle.  The Petitioner was searched incident to his arrest and a smart phone was found on his person, which the arresting officer access and obtained information linking the Petitioner to the Bloods gang.  About two hours after the arrest a detective further accessed the phone searching for additional evidence rationalizing that gang members often photograph themselves holding guns. During the search of the phone, the detective found a photograph of the Petitioner standing in front of a car that the police suspected was involved in an earlier shooting.  The Petitioner was charged in that shooting based on the photograph, including charges in connection with that earlier shooting, with firing at an occupied vehicle, assault with a semiautomatic firearm, and attempted murder.  The Petitioner moved the trial court to suppress all evidence obtained from the phone as violating as a warrantless search under the Fourth Amendment.  The trial court rejected the Peitioner’s motion and was convicted on all three counts and sentenced to 15 years in prison.  The California Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court’s decision and relied on the California Supreme Court’s decision in People v. Diaz, 51 Cal. 4th 84, 244 P. 3d 501 (2011).  Diaz held that the Fourth Amendment permits a warrantless search of cell phone data incident to an arrest, so long as the cell phone was immediately associated with the arrestee’s person.  The California Supreme Court denied the Petitioner’s request for view.  SCOTUS granted certiorari.

In the second case Brima Wurie was making a drug transaction that was observed by a police officer.  Wurie was arrested and brought to the police station and searched. Two cell phones were seized from Wurie’s person, including a “flip phone.”  The arresting officers noticed that the phone was repeatedly receiving calls from a source identified as “My House.”  The officers saw a photo wallpaper photo of a woman and a baby.  The officers access the phones call log to determine the phone number and used an online phone directory to trace phone to an apartment building.  Upon arriving at the apartment building, the officers determined the location of Wurie’s apartment and observed the woman in the photograph.  The officers secured the apartment, obtaine a search warrant and, upon executing the warrant, found 215 grams of crack cocaine, marijuana, drug paraphernalia, a firearm and ammunition, and cash.  Wurie was subsequently charged in connection with the search to distributing crack cocaine, possessing crack cocaine with intent to distribute, and being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition.  Wurie moved at the Federal District Court of Massachusetts to suppress the evidence obtained from the search of the apartment and argued that it was obtained as a result of an unconstitutional search of his cell phone.  The trial court rejected his motion and Wurie was convicted on all three counts and sentenced to 22 years in prison.  The 1st Circuit was divided but reversed the District Court’s and vacated Wurie’s convictions for possession with intent to distribute and possession of a firearm as a felon.  The 1st Circuit held that:

…cell phones are distinct from other physical possessions that may be searched incident to arrest without a warrant, because of the amount of personal data cell phones contain and the negligible threat they pose to law enforcement interests.

SCOTUS granted certiorari.

In considering the issue of the search of cell phones, the Court referred to its holding in three seminal cases dealing with searches incident to arrest:

Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752 (1969)

United States v. Robinson, 414 U. S. 218 (1973)

Arizona v. Gant, 556 U. S. 332 (2009)

The Court ultimately declined to extend its holding in Robinson, which held that a “custodial arrest of a suspect based on probable cause is a reasonable intrusion under the Fourth Amendment; that intrusion being lawful, a search incident to the arrest requires no additional justification.”, to searches of data on cell phones, and held instead that officers must generally secure a warrant before conducting such a search.

Justice Roberts writing the opinion for a unanimous Court noted the following:

• Digital data stored on a cell phone cannot itself be used as a weapon to harm an arresting officer or to effectuate the arrestee’s escape. Law enforcement officers remain free to examine the physical aspects of a phone to ensure that it will not be used as a weapon—say, to determine whether there is a razor blade hidden between the phone and its case. Once an officer has secured a phone and eliminated any potential physical threats, however, data on the phone can endanger no one.

• The search incident to arrest exception rests not only on the heightened government interests at stake in a volatile arrest situation, but also on an arrestee’s reduced privacy interests upon being taken into police custody.

• The fact that an arrestee has diminished privacy inter­ests does not mean that the Fourth Amendment falls out of the picture entirely. Not every search “is acceptable solely because a person is in custody.”

• The United States asserts that a search of all data stored on a cell phone is “materially indistinguishable” from searches of these sorts of physical items. Brief for United States in No. 13–212, p. 26. That is like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon. Both are ways of getting from point A to point B, but little else justifies lumping them together. Modern cell phones, as a category, implicate privacy con­cerns far beyond those implicated by the search of a ciga­rette pack, a wallet, or a purse. A conclusion that inspect­ing the contents of an arrestee’s pockets works no substantial additional intrusion on privacy beyond the arrest itself may make sense as applied to physical items, but any extension of that reasoning to digital data has to rest on its own bottom.

• Although the data stored on a cell phone is distin­guished from physical records by quantity alone, certain types of data are also qualitatively different.

• The United States first proposes that the Gant standard be imported from the vehicle context, allowing a warrant­less search of an arrestee’s cell phone whenever it is rea­sonable to believe that the phone contains evidence of the crime of arrest.

• Our holding, of course, is not that the information on a cell phone is immune from search; it is instead that a warrant is generally required before such a search, evenwhen a cell phone is seized incident to arrest.

• Moreover, even though the search incident to arrest exception does not apply to cell phones, other case-specific exceptions may still justify a warrantless search of a particular phone. “One well-recognized exception applies when ‘“the exigencies of the situation” make the needs of law enforcement so compelling that [a] warrantless search is objectively reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.’”

• Such exi­gencies could include the need to prevent the imminent destruction of evidence in individual cases, to pursue a fleeing suspect, and to assist persons who are seriously injured or are threatened with imminent injury.

• Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans “the privacies of life,”

The significance of Riley is that it takes into account the ever-increasing influence that technology has in everyday life and the effect that it has on privacy and balances the needs of privacy with that of law enforcement in certain exigent circumstances.  While this ruling will not spill over into the controversial collection of personal information by the NSA, it does demonstrate that the Court is cognizant that the bounds of privacy are not static and those bounds are affected and will expand as technology progresses.

The Court’s opinion in Riley can be found here.