Posted on March 03, 2017 in Uncategorized

New and evolving technology often leads to novel of legal issues for the courts to address. In 2014, the United States Supreme Court addressed one such issue in the case of Riley v. California. The issue at hand was whether or not law enforcement could search a suspect's cell phone without a warrant.

Riley was actually a consolidation of two cases where the police had searched a suspect's phone without first getting a warrant. In analyzing the case, the Supreme Court stated that, under the Fourth Amendment, generally a warrant is required in order to conduct a search. The court further stated that "[i]n the absence of a warrant, a search is reasonable only if it falls within a specific exception to the warrant requirement." One warrant exception that has been recognized is the search incident to arrest exception. It was this exception that had been used to justify the searches in both of the Riley cases. To determine if cell phone data fell into the search incident to arrest exception, the court looked at "the degree to which [the search] intrudes upon an individual's privacy and... the degree to which [the search] is needed for the promotion of legitimate governmental interests."

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