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SI of cellphone justified by risk of incoming calls altering the incoming call log

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Cellphone was a proper subject of a search incident to protect the information on it from being removed or tampered with on arrest, including incoming cellphone calls from altering the incoming call log. United States v. Santillan, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 61994 (D. Ariz. July 11, 2008): In this case the defendant was arrested and agents searched the incoming and outgoing calls on his cell phone mere minutes after the arrest and seizure of his phone, and as soon as practicable given the high speed chase that had just transpired. The search of the phone was roughly contemporaneous with the arrest. Furthermore, the agents knew that other suspects were still at large, had heard transmissions indicating that weapons were being prepared by the smugglers and their cohorts, and had good reason to believe that the suspects had been in contact with the defendant...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on August 16, 2008 (boomark / email).