Maryland Court Says It Would Still Be Equating A Smartphone With A 'Crumpled Cigarette Pack' If Not For Riley Decision
from the way-to-adapt-to-the-realities-of-the-new-millenium dept
The Supreme Court’s Riley decision said law enforcement officers must obtain warrants to search cell phones incident to an arrest. A recent Maryland Appeals Court decision prevented the suppression of evidence obtained via a warrantless search of a smartphone. Why? Well, for a few reasons, most of which seem convoluted and almost inexplicable considering the context. (via John Wesley Hall of FourthAmendment.com)
The opinion opens with this:
Petitioner appealed the judgment of conviction to the Court of Special Appeals and, while the case was pending in that court, filed a petition for writ of certiorari, which we granted. We then stayed all proceedings in this case until the United States Supreme Court issued its decisions in Riley v. California, cert. granted, 134 S. Ct. 999 (2014), and United States v. Wurie, cert. granted, 134 S. Ct. 999 (2014). On June 25, 2014, the Supreme Court issued a consolidated opinion in those two cases. Riley v. California, 134 S. Ct. 2473 (2014).
Despite staying the case to hear from the Supreme Court on this issue, the Maryland court went in the other direction once that decision had been handed down. Considering the circumstances, this is probably the right decision, but one wonders why they bothered staying the case if it was going to rely on pre-Riley caselaw anyway.
Officers interviewing a suspect about a robbery took a look at his cell phone and found unopened text messages pertaining to the criminal act. The defendant sought suppression of this warrantless search of his phone but the court found that because the search had occurred before the Riley decision, the officers here were covered under the “good faith” exception because no warrant requirement existed at that point.
This would be all well and good (if a little bizarre considering the stay issued for the pending, but disregarded, Riley decision) if the court hadn’t decided to quote previous Supreme Court decisions so badly outdated they only serve to make the Maryland court look utterly ridiculous.
The suspect here had a smartphone. The Maryland Court exhumes the corpse of the 1973 US v. Robinson decision and applies it to the 2011 search.
The Supreme Court further developed the scope of the search incident to arrest exception in United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218 (1973). Robinson had been arrested for driving on a suspended license. The arresting officer, while conducting a pat down of Robinson, felt an object in his coat pocket that the officer could not identify. The officer removed that object—a crumpled cigarette packet—opened it, and found capsules of heroin inside. Id. at 220-23. The Court upheld the warrantless search as a proper search incident to Robinson’s arrest.
This is a court telling an appellant that — if Riley had not gone the way it did — it would still consider a smartphone loaded with personal information and a connection to web-based services offering even more personal information to be roughly equivalent to whatever might fit inside a crumpled cigarette pack.
Now, I have no problem with the court granting the “good faith exception,” considering the search occurred pre-Riley, but I do have my concerns about a court that will apparently only consider the implications of technological advances when the Supreme Court basically forces it to.
Attempting to apply a forty-year-old decision involving a small cardboard box to today’s smartphones is to indicate the court either has performed no serious independent thinking about the subject, or has somehow managed to escape dealing with relevant cases that might force it confront the fact that a computer that fits in someone’s pocket is not even remotely equivalent to the “contents” of said pocket.
To be fair, the DOJ has been equally unwilling to cede ground to logic and has argued for similarly non-comparable items to be deemed comparable by the nation’s highest court. But this is to be expected from an entity that acts on behalf of the nation’s law enforcement when presenting its arguments in court (despite having the word “Justice” in its name). A state appeals court, on the other hand, is actually supposed to be acting on behalf of the slippery term “justice,” and citing outdated caselaw does very little to serve that purpose.
Filed Under: 4th amendment, maryland, mobile phones, privacy, riley, searches, supreme court
Comments on “Maryland Court Says It Would Still Be Equating A Smartphone With A 'Crumpled Cigarette Pack' If Not For Riley Decision”
When the ruling has already been made
Despite staying the case to hear from the Supreme Court on this issue, the Maryland court went in the other direction once that decision had been handed down. Considering the circumstances, this is probably the right decision, but one wonders why they bothered staying the case if it was going to rely on pre-Riley caselaw anyway.
Most likely because they were hoping that the SC would have ruled opposite of what it did. Waiting to see what the SC has to say on a matter, and then ignoring it only makes sense if they had already made their decision, and were hoping to get some extra backing for it from a higher court. Either that or they just felt like wasting everyone’s time, as though that’s any better.
Why does "good faith" make sense here?
How does the fact that this incident happened prior to the Riley decision make it okay? The Riley case also happened before the Riley decision (obviously), yet the SC ruled that a warrant was required. Wouldn’t the SC rule the same for this case?
Re: Why does "good faith" make sense here?
What the Supreme Court actually did in the twin appeals of Riley and Wurie—
… mumble… … mumble… …equal protection of the laws… … mumble… … mumble…
Re: Re: Why does "good faith" make sense here?
U.S. v Wurie (1st Cir. 2013)
(Citations omitted.)
Re: Re: Why does "good faith" make sense here?
People v Riley (Cal. Ct. App., Feb. 19, 2015)
I beleive that the US Constitution and Bill of Rights were in effect at the time of the cell phone search in this case. I can’t seem to find where the US Constitution or Bill of Rights grant any such “good faith” exception to our “inalienable” rights government “shall not violate”. My understanding of “shall not be violated” in the supreme law of the land is the exact opposite of any “good faith exception” applied by the court here.
The Supremacy Clause:
Re: Supremacy clause [was ]
Sorry, I’m not sure I comprehend the argument you’re trying to make with the Supremacy clause here.
You can’t be suggesting that Maryland’s high court is failing to follow the United States Supreme Court decision in Davis v United States (2011)?
Quick Look
An office conducts a legal pat-down, finds an unknown rectangular object, and pulls it out.
Let’s say he finds a cigarette packet. At this point, a quick look inside the packet is just being thorough, especially if it crumpling felt odd to him. It’s reasonable to expect he checks it at the place and time.
But let’s say the object is a smartphone. Without a warrant, a full search of that phone shouldn’t even enter the officer’s mind. But a quick look at the home screen, and maybe also the last few messages, has a hint of “reasonableness” to it, in the same way it’s okay to glance inside the cigarette packet. However, that’s nothing like searching the entire contents of the phone, and especially not like seizing the phone to give it the full forensic treatment.
The point is that I don’t think it’s a good idea to declare phones, laptops, etc completely off limits in these situations. But if you need extended time with the device, or special skills, that’s a pretty good indicator you’ve gone beyond what is reasonable, at least until you have a warrant.
Re: Quick Look
So LEOs can take a quick look, without a warrant, in the all windows of your house and that’s ok?
Re: Re: In all the windows of your house...
I think in Coehoorn’s interpretation, if a glance into your home window reveals something suspicious (an unlikely example would be a bound and gagged child that shares the general features of a recent amber alert) then he can act on that reasonable suspicion.
If the same officer has hang at the window and look around for something, or the suspicion is not reasonable (a pile of white powder on a mirror), or he has to go around the house and willfully check windows, then the search should become illegal and require a warrant.
If we could count on the police to exercise this degree of privacy, I’d regard good faith searches to be reasonable, but as things are good faith has turned into a device like detection dogs to merely bypass the warrant process, so I think good faith exceptions are bogus, for what it’s worth.
And granted, this is the degree of privacy that lets Konerak Sinthasomphone get killed, but it lets so many others live, and lets the rest of us live in less fear.
Re: Quick Look
From Riley:
It seems to follow that information encountered in plain view during this physical aspects examination of a device is not excludable.
Beyond that, there’s an active debate over rules versus standards in the fourth amendment context. If one favors bright-line, categorical rules to guide police, then the facility with which a trained officer may apply the rule is a consideration.
Good Faith is not relevant.
In my understanding of fourth-amendment protections (mind you IANAL) a suspect determined to be guilty by evidence obtained by violation of the fourth-amendment is acquitted as a penalty to the state for violating the rights of the suspect.
And I was in a recent conversation right here on TechDirt in which it was clarified that a law or practice ruled unconstitutional was ruled to be so at its inception, hence all convicts who were incarcerated by that ruling are set free.
Whether or not the officer was acting in good faith is irrelevant. The state was wrong to let the officer search the pjone without a warrant in the first place, and the officer was acting on bad orders. The suspect’s rights were violated, now affirmed by SCOTUS and by not vacating the conviction, the court continues violate the suspect’s rights.
"Good Faith"
“the officers here were covered under the “good faith” exception”
Why is ignorance of the law ok for LEOs, but for the unwashed masses, i.e. citizens, ignorance of the law is no excuse?
Re: "Good Faith"
Because citizens do not act in good faith.
Re: Re: "Citizens do not act in good faith."
Officers do?
Following the arguments
From the Maryland Court of Appeals opinion above:
Davis v United States (2011)
And from the dissent in Davis:
The Evidence Industry
Wondering when the government’s inserted insecurity – ie. police backdoors into all cell phones – will be used as a defense by someone convicted due to evidence discovered through a search of a cell phone, since the existence of these backdoors literally means that anyone with access to the “magic key”, could easily plant the “evidence” on the phone for later “discovery”.
Should not be long now.
—
Demby and Sinclair
From the Spence case above:
• Demby v State (Md. July 27, 2015)
• Sinclair v State (Md. July 27, 2015)