By Alethia Kasben
Gongwer News Service
Warrants to search an individual’s cell phone need to be as specific as possible about the information being sought, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
In People v. Carson (MSC Docket No. 166923), the Supreme Court agreed with a Court of Appeals panel that the search warrant in question was unconstitutional but disagreed that the failure of counsel to challenge the warrant was enough to overturn the convictions at issue.
The case was remanded back to the Court of Appeals to consider other issues it didn’t rule on previously.
The court considered search warrants for cell phones, citing a U.S. Supreme Court decision that noted the vast amount of information cell phones contain, and that they can hold “the sum of an individual’s private life.”
“The issue we confront today is the proper relationship between these realities and the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement, which mandates that a warrant particularly describ[e] the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized,’” the opinion says.
The majority ruled “the warrant at issue was insufficiently particular and that, therefore, the unrestrained search of defendant’s cell phone violated the Fourth Amendment.”
The majority opinion, written Chief Justice Megan Cavanagh, was signed onto only by Justice Elizabeth Welch and Justice Kimberly Thomas. Justice Kyra Harris Bolden wrote separately, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Specifying the crimes being investigated is necessary, but the court said that alone does not usually satisfy the particularity requirement, the majority said. Additionally, the court did not create a rule for courts to determine if a warrant meets the requirements.
“We conclude that the search warrant in this case was insufficiently particular. It allowed officers to comb through every conceivable type of information on the cell phone limited only, at best, to evidence ‘pertaining to the investigation of Larceny in a Building and Safe Breaking,’” the majority opinion says. “In our modern age, when cell phones carry a virtually unlimited amount of private information, such wide-ranging exploratory rummaging is constitutionally intolerable and clearly violates the Fourth Amendment.”
Justice Brian Zahra concurred in result only and wrote separately. Justice Richard Bernstein also concurred in result only and wrote a separate opinion.
Justice Noah Hood did not participate in the case, as he was not yet on the bench and he also was on the Court of Appeals panel that decided the case.
Gongwer News Service
Warrants to search an individual’s cell phone need to be as specific as possible about the information being sought, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
In People v. Carson (MSC Docket No. 166923), the Supreme Court agreed with a Court of Appeals panel that the search warrant in question was unconstitutional but disagreed that the failure of counsel to challenge the warrant was enough to overturn the convictions at issue.
The case was remanded back to the Court of Appeals to consider other issues it didn’t rule on previously.
The court considered search warrants for cell phones, citing a U.S. Supreme Court decision that noted the vast amount of information cell phones contain, and that they can hold “the sum of an individual’s private life.”
“The issue we confront today is the proper relationship between these realities and the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement, which mandates that a warrant particularly describ[e] the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized,’” the opinion says.
The majority ruled “the warrant at issue was insufficiently particular and that, therefore, the unrestrained search of defendant’s cell phone violated the Fourth Amendment.”
The majority opinion, written Chief Justice Megan Cavanagh, was signed onto only by Justice Elizabeth Welch and Justice Kimberly Thomas. Justice Kyra Harris Bolden wrote separately, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Specifying the crimes being investigated is necessary, but the court said that alone does not usually satisfy the particularity requirement, the majority said. Additionally, the court did not create a rule for courts to determine if a warrant meets the requirements.
“We conclude that the search warrant in this case was insufficiently particular. It allowed officers to comb through every conceivable type of information on the cell phone limited only, at best, to evidence ‘pertaining to the investigation of Larceny in a Building and Safe Breaking,’” the majority opinion says. “In our modern age, when cell phones carry a virtually unlimited amount of private information, such wide-ranging exploratory rummaging is constitutionally intolerable and clearly violates the Fourth Amendment.”
Justice Brian Zahra concurred in result only and wrote separately. Justice Richard Bernstein also concurred in result only and wrote a separate opinion.
Justice Noah Hood did not participate in the case, as he was not yet on the bench and he also was on the Court of Appeals panel that decided the case.
