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Warrantless Cell Phone Search Required Suppression and a New Trial

The First Department ordered a new trial because the police searched defendant’s phone without a warrant and used photos found on the phone as the basis for a search warrant:

The court should have granted defendant’s motion to suppress photographs obtained from his cell phone. After the police arrested defendant and seized his phone, an officer looked through it without a warrant, and found two photos stored on the phone that depicted a pistol resembling the pistol recovered in this case. It was not disputed that the search of defendant’s cell phone was unlawful. Moreover, a recent decision of the United States Supreme Court holds that a cell phone is not a proper subject of a warrantless search incident to arrest … .

After finding the photos on the phone, the same officer averred in an affidavit in support of an application for a search warrant, which specifically sought to search photographs among other things on the phone, that there was reasonable cause to believe that evidence concerning defendant’s possession of a firearm existed on defendant’s phone. This evidence demonstrated that the “decision to seek the warrant was prompted by what [the police] had seen during the initial entry” … . Rather than applying for a warrant on the basis of mere probable cause, the officer “achieve[d] certain cause by conducting an unlawful confirmatory search,” which “undermines the very purpose of the warrant requirement and cannot be tolerated” … . Accordingly, even if there were independent probable cause for the warrant, it would not immunize the initial warrantless search, or permit the subsequently-granted warrant to render the photos admissible … . Nor may the inevitable discovery doctrine be applied to this evidence; the exception does not apply where “the evidence sought to be suppressed is the very evidence obtained in the illegal search” … . People v Marinez, 2014 NY Slip Op 06668, 1st Dept 10-2-14

 

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