In some states, police officers need a warrant before they can search someone's cellphone after an arrest. In others, no warrant is needed. Some states have no ruling on the matter. The U.S. Supreme Court is ready to decide this important issue by reviewing two criminal cases that involve cellphone searches that were conducted without a warrant. So what does this mean for you right now? Keep reading to learn how things currently stand on this issue—depending on the state where someone gets arrested.
When someone is arrested, cops can search that person's pockets and places that are within their immediate reach. Now obviously, cellphones are different from a baggie or a cigarette packet, and they are more than the flip phones of earlier. They contain a wealth of personal information. Can they be treated the same as other containers? It depends on who you ask.
Court Decisions by State
If you go the Florida Supreme Court, justices made a decision in 2013 that it is a violation of search and seizure rights to run a warrantless cellphone search. In the case that decision came from, officers had looked through a robbery suspect's phone and had found pictures of a handgun, money, handguns and money, and pictures of engagement rings, all with incriminating time stamps.
If you ask California Supreme Court justices, however, they decided in 2011 that a cellphone is much like any other container an officer could look for in a search. No warrant was needed. In that case, officers had arrested a man on ecstasy charges, and the suspect denied conducting any such sales. Officers looked through the phone and found a text message that was used as incriminating evidence.
Here's a quick summary of where states stand (if courts have come to a decision on this issue at all) as of July 2013. The following regions have decided that search warrants are necessary before police can look through a suspect's cellphone, even after an arrest:
- Florida
- Maine
- Massachusetts
- New Hampshire
- Ohio
- Puerto Rico
- Rhode Island
These states have said that no warrant is required before your cellphone is searched after you have been arrested: Alabama, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
The Cases Before the U.S. Supreme Court
January of 2014, the United States Supreme Court announced that it would examine two cases involving warrantless cellphone searches. In one case, Unites States. v. Wurie, officers had only a simple flip phone to look through and found what they were looking for in the call log. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First District had ruled that the search in that case was not constitutional. The other case,
Riley v. California, involved a smartphone. Officers found a picture of the suspect with a car that was thought to be a used in a shooting.
As technology evolves, Fourth Amendment rights need to adapt accordingly, say privacy groups who have submitted briefs to the Supreme Court. A legal brief from the American Library Association likens a smartphone to a library containing 6,000 books, data so vast that a warrantless search and seizure would be unreasonable. The oral arguments before the Supreme Court are slated to start on the 21st of April.
So what does this mean for right now, if you or someone you know currently faces criminal charges that involve evidence taken from a warrantless cellphone search? Learn about your rights when you call a criminal defense attorney on our directory today!
