As reported here, on June 25, 2014, the United States Supreme Court released a unanimous opinion that “police must generally get a warrant before searching the cell phones of people they arrest, in a decision with broad implications for digital privacy rights and police investigations.”

The Court’s slip (expedited) opinion can be found here, and I encourage our readers to review it before commenting.

The Court reviewed two pertinent cases on appeal: “Riley v. California” and “United States v. Wurie”.

In “Riley”, the suspect was “stopped for a traffic violation, which eventually led to his arrest on weapons charges. An officer searching Riley incident to the arrest seized a cell phone from Riley’s pants pocket. The officer accessed information on the phone and noticed the repeated use of a term associated with a street gang. At the police station two hours later, a detective specializing in gangs further examined the phone’s digital contents. Based in part on photographs and videos that the detective found, the State charged Riley in connection with a shooting that had occurred a few weeks earlier and sought an enhanced sentence based on Riley’s gang membership. Riley moved to suppress all evidence that the police had obtained from his cell phone. The trial court denied the motion, and Riley was convicted. The California Court of Appeal affirmed.”

In “Wurie”, the suspect was “arrested after police observed him participate in an apparent drug sale. At the police station, the officers seized a cell phone from Wurie’s person and noticed that the phone was receiving multiple calls from a source identified as “my house” on its external screen. The officers opened the phone, accessed its call log, determined the number associated with the “my house” label, and traced that number to what they suspected was Wurie’s apartment. They secured a search warrant and found drugs, a firearm and ammunition, and cash in the ensuing search. Wurie was then charged with drug and firearm offenses. He moved to suppress the evidence obtained from the search of the apartment. The District Court denied the motion, and Wurie was convicted. The First Circuit reversed the denial of the motion to suppress and vacated the relevant convictions.”

The Supreme Court ultimately held that “The police generally may not, without a warrant, search digital information on a cell phone seized from an individual who has been arrested.” The term “generally” is pertinent because the Court does recognize legitimate exceptions such as “exigent circumstances” and free and voluntary consent.

Here’s my challenge with the decision: Police officers can only arrest based upon probable cause or in compliance with an arrest warrant. In the two cases reviewed, no warrant was involved. In each case the officers developed probable cause to place the suspects under arrest for criminal acts and did so.

In conducting legal inventory searches of the suspects’ cell phones, pursuant to their lawful arrest, the officers developed information that led them to develop probable cause to believe the suspects were involved in *other* types of criminal activity.

The information in the respective phones was not secured in any way. Neither suspect had activated any passwords, PINs, or other programming methods to secure the information in their phones from casual review. This, to my mind, is akin to arresting a person who has a piece of paper in his back pocket, upon which officers find evidence of other criminal activity. The evidence would be admissible. In my personal experience, officers discover such evidence *routinely* and Courts routinely admit the evidence at trial.

Had the phones in these cases been secured against casual review then I would agree with the Court’s decision…accessing the information the phones contained would have required either consent, exigency, or a search warrant. This is also true when a suspect is arrested in possession of a briefcase. If the case is locked, consent, exigency, or a warrant are required to access he contents. If the case is not locked, however, it is subject to both search and inventory incident to a lawful arrest.

Today’s smartphones, with their extensive storage capacities, are essentially digital briefcases which, when not secured against casual inspection, should be fully searchable incident to a lawful arrest.

As mentioned at the beginning, this decision makes police work in Long Beach a little more difficult, but not impossible. This decision notwithstanding, LBPD officers and detectives will continue to solve crimes and arrest suspects because they are actually quite good at what they do. This decision just makes an already tough job a little more challenging.