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D.Mass. on search incident of cell phones

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Search incident of defendant's cell phone was reasonable: "The search of Wurie's cell phone incident to his arrest was limited and reasonable. The officers, having seen the 'my house' notation on Wurie's caller identification screen, reasonably believed that the stored phone number would lead them to the location of Wurie's suspected drug stash." The court, however, has doubts about the breadth of cellphone search incident and summarizes the law. United States v. Wurie, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 37434 (D. Mass. May 4, 2009): Neither the Supreme Court nor the First Circuit has directly considered the issue of whether a search incident to arrest may include a search of a cell phone's contents, and if it does, how thorough the search might be. It seems indisputable that a person has a subjective expectation of privacy in the contents of his or her cell phone...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on May 06, 2009 (boomark / email).