Texas Appeals Court Rules Phone Search After Arrest Violates 4th Amendment [pdf]

http://www.cca.courts.state.tx.us/opinions/pdfOpinion.asp?OpinionID=25167

by driverdan • 12 years ago

171 52 12 years ago

cca.courts.state.tx.us

bradleysmith• 12 years ago

have another link anywhere?

I'm catching an internal server error trying to find that PDF.

driverdan2• 12 years ago

Here's a Google Drive link for online viewing: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz_UAHWnblkuSmZtSVhDQldUb3c

abjorn• 12 years ago

Oh boy, the last time I saw an official state of Texas site give a 500 error it stayed that way for a month...

essayist• 12 years ago

Google Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

dmix2• 12 years ago

In Canada, if the phone has a password police need a search warrant to go through it.

Whats more alarming is he was a high school student who got arrested for a disturbance on a bus:

One morning, Anthony Granville was arrested for the Class C offense of causing adisturbance on the school bus. His cell phone was taken from him during the bookingprocedure and placed in the jail property room.

pavel_lishin• 12 years ago

Whats more alarming is he was a high school student who got arrested for a disturbance on a bus

That's a pretty vague term. We don't know what, exactly, his disturbance on a bus consisted of.

Crito4• 12 years ago

Agreed, a "disturbance" on a moving vehicle has the potential to be rather serious. If it was hitting some other kid with a spitball then an arrest would be unreasonable, but something interfering with the driver would be much more serious.

tptacek4• 12 years ago

The subsequent felony charge of "Improper Visual Photography" charge was more alarming; here's the statute, though:

http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/txstatutes/PE/5/21/21.15

This actually sounds like a sane law.

dmix2• 12 years ago

Sounds alarming for sure, but agreed sounds worthy of criminal investigation.

It sounds like there was a dispute over a sexting picture of most likely a girl at the school. The police were called probably from yelling. Not fighting as there is no assault charge. They most certainly heard about the photo but didn't do anything about that at the time.

The issue I take is the fact he was put in a jail cell for the disturbance part. Which was the primary factor allowing the police freedom to do what would otherwise be considered violating his rights, during a typical police stop.

sushirain2• 12 years ago

"Texas Appeals Court Rules Phone Search". This title is a garden-path sentence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence

waqf• 12 years ago

How so? What is the misleading interpretation here?

schoen• 12 years ago

I parsed it correctly because I'm used to reading about appeals courts ruling on things, but one could take "rules" as a noun and "phone" as a verb (the court's rules telephoned a search to let the search know that it was illegal?).

"Search" could also be a verb, but that makes it more of a stretch (even if we envision a kind of phone called a "rules phone", there would be a singular/plural agreement problem in taking it as the subject of "search").

chacham15• 12 years ago

It doesnt mean that the language is misleading but rather that the natural parsing of the language is wrong.

I.e. we naturally parse this sentence as "(Texas) Appeals (Court Rules Phone Search)" which is wrong. The correct parse is "(Texas Appeals Court) Rules (Phone Search)". I.e. at first glance we think that "appeals" is a verb rather than an adjective.

elchief• 12 years ago

I still don't understand the title.

driverdan2• 12 years ago

Is "The Texas Court of Appeals rules that phone searches after a suspect is arrested violates the 4th Amendment" clearer?

Unfortunately that's too long to fit in the title.

Mindless2112• 12 years ago

(Texas Appeals Court) Rules (((Phone Search) After Arrest) Violates (4th Amendment))

allsystemsgo• 12 years ago

Interesting to see the conversations in the court room. You'd think they'd be more intellectual or high minded. You'd think they would cite specific law nomenclature or cases. But it really is just off the cuff opinions being thrown about.

kyrra• 12 years ago

News coverage on today's ruling: http://www.statesman.com/news/news/texas-court-expands-cell-...

EFF story on the case from a year ago when the case was going to trial: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/04/eff-texas-high-court-c...

The EFF post gives some background on the case in question.

johnny635• 12 years ago

Texas rocks!

hippich• 12 years ago

So it seems cop screwed up. He could obtain proper search warrant, but he did not. So phone search is allowed, just as usual, with proper warrant. Otherwise - it is illegal search.

tptacek4• 12 years ago

I'm not sure I see where the officer had sufficient cause for that warrant. It sounds like the subsequent felony charge was unrelated to the original offense.

gregcohn• 12 years ago

This is exactly the point of getting a warrant: to have this dialogue with a judge.

rosser2• 12 years ago

Skimming the ruling, this is pretty much exactly the line of reasoning I'd hoped a court would use in considering these issues. Yes, it turns out, a phone is not just like a pair of pants. Who knew?

tptacek4• 12 years ago

Footnote 30, on Page 13, is very very important to understanding the limitations of this ruling; the ruling concerns inventory searches and not the more common searches incident to arrest. If you are arrested, in most locales in the US, it is very likely that evidence taken from your phone at the time of your arrest will stand up in court. Keep your phones secure.

rosser2• 12 years ago

Unfortunately true. When I saw the headline, I was hopeful this was going to be about "incident" searches, and not merely "inventory" searches.

I still don't understand how the reasoning behind "incident" searches, which I'd understood to be primarily about the safety of the arresting officers, would apply to the contents of a mobile device, but that's modern criminal justice for you...

tptacek4• 12 years ago

Incident searches are not about the safety of officers (this has come up on HN before). If you follow the cites and the doctrines, it turns out that incident searches have always been about collecting and preserving evidence as much as safety. I think incident searches get confused with Terry stops, which are solely meant to be about officer safety.

The unique issue at play in incident phone searches is the notion that a phone is a little like your house; that if you're arrested during (say) a traffic stop, the police don't have the authority to drive to your house and search it too. Similarly, if you're arrested at a traffic stop, getting access to your trunk can be legally iffy too; incident searches are restricted to your immediate vicinity.

This is something SCOTUS is going to resolve next year.

chrsstrm• 12 years ago

Keep your phones secure

Ok, so I get arrested and my phone is taken. Lucky for me my phone is encrypted and I was able to shut it off before it left my possession. So I've made it more difficult for the phone to be searched on the spot, but what is preventing the authorities from compelling me to decrypt the phone eventually?

breakall2• 12 years ago

The 5th amendment?

BHSPitMonkey2• 12 years ago

Lots of things. Namely, they can't prove that you are even able to.

aptwebapps• 12 years ago

The point here, if I'm not mistaken, has to do with search warrants and what evidence is admissible in court.

zaroth• 12 years ago

I also enjoyed the footnotes, like #19;

"Alderman v. United States, 394 U.S. 165, 176-80 (1969) (a person’s property interest in his own home was so great as to allow him to object to electronic surveillance of conversations emanating from his home, even though he himself was not a party to the conversations)."

dtrizzle• 12 years ago

Texas is doing better than California on this issue: http://www.petersesq.com/2014/02/cell-phone-searches-ca-vs-t...

sl1e• 12 years ago

Page 13 ref 29: Is this saying that I am exempt from unreasonable search if it is known that I let others(someone) use my phone. That by letting someone use it I no longer assume the "expectation of Privacy"?

Texas Appeals Court Rules Phone Search After Arrest Violates 4th Amendment [pdf]

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