Tag: cell phone search
Posted on Wed Mar 30, 2011 at 08:14:00 AM EST
Tags: cell phone search (all tags)
The Aspen Daily News reports that Aspen resident Devin Schutter won his challenge to the police search of his iPhone in the Colorado Supreme Court.
The Colorado Supreme Court on Monday upheld by a 6-1 vote the suppression of evidence against a man accused of selling cocaine, saying Aspen police exceeded “permissible limits” in trying to identify who owned a cell phone.
...In their ruling, the state justices said the “district court found that Schutter had not abandoned the iPhone, and even assuming it could be characterized as lost or mislaid property, the police invaded Schutter’s reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of his phone without a search warrant or an appropriate exception to the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement.”
Devin had left the phone in the restroom of a gas station, along with the key to the bathroom. The door locked when he exited. He asked the clerk to retrieve it, but the clerk said he was busy. About an hour later, a cop came into the store and the clerk turned the phone over to him. The officer then answered the phone when it rang, and somene asked for Dev, whom they figured was Devin Shutter. Devin was already in their cross-hairs for allegedly selling cocaine.
When Devin went to the police station seeking the return of his phone, the police refused to give it to him. Then they searched through the text messages and calls, and based on that data, got a search warrant for Devin's mother's residence, where they discovered drugs. (Devin had been staying at his mother's home.) [More...]
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