In today's modern world, phones are all-pervading. Many individuals have two phones: one for work and the other for personal use, and they carry them everywhere. As phone technology rapidly changes, they become smaller, faster as well as cheaper, people are heavily becoming reliant on them for storage of their data. Secondly, people are relying on their phones to communicate with their friends and families via text message, video conferencing, and email. Due to the ever-presence of phones, it is of no surprise that law enforcement searches on phones is becoming a routine part of a criminal investigation, either a minor crime or a serious crime. The law struggles to keep up as technology advances, and it becomes evident when someone tries to apply constitutional principles in the twenty-first century. The law that got written in the eighteenth century did not take into account the modern smartphone or law enforcement officers' ability to make mirror copies of people's personal information in a matter of seconds. The fourth Amendment challenges government searches as well as seizures of phones so that attorneys can zealously represent their clients.
The Case Jane Doe v. City of Instrusia
While the accused was unconscious in the hospital, law enforcement officers examined her phone. The accused person's phone personal data was pulled out by the officers that allowed them to track her movements in the hours prior to her arrest. The Court upheld the illegal search on her phone. Regardless of Jane's request for suppression on the basis that the officers did not have a warrant to search the phone. Jane Doe was convicted based on the data gotten from her phone and the blood sample. The Court upholding the illegal search the police officers did on Jane's phone was wrong since the Fourth Amendment protects text messages. The American constitution contains the Fourth Amendment, which is a part of the Bill of Rights that was passed by congress. It states that " The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
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How the Bill of rights applies to an electronic device
Paper and Effects
Devices such as phones are containers, as well as "Effects."
Information that gets contained in phones represents "Papers" in the fourth Amendment.
Searches
Privacy expectation exists in an individual's electronic devices
The circumstance that leads to searches should be totally analyzed
Government Actor
Private searchers
State, local law enforcement offers as well as the federal government
Supporting Evidence
Katz v. United States (1967)
Federal offers acting on an intuition that the defendant was giving away gambling data using a phone to a customer on another state; they attached an eavesdropping device on a public phone that the defendant was using. Based on the data the federal agents gathered, the defendant got convicted for illegal transmission. Katz appealed on the grounds that his conviction was unlawful because the data the federal officers used when they eavesdropped on him could not be used as evidence against him. The question that arose was, does the Fourth Amendment offer any protection against unreasonable searches. Secondly, does it require any law enforcement officer first to obtain a warrant to tap a phone? The Court of Appeal ruled that the accused person has the right to the Fourth Amendment protection for the conversation he had on the phone.
United States v. Jones (2012)
The accused person got arrested by Law enforcement officers in 2005, because of possession of drugs; this was after law enforcement officers put a tracking device on the vehicle without any approval from a judge. They used the tracking device and followed Antoine Jones for a month. When Jones got taken to Court for the first time, he was found not guilty to all charges against him, upset because of that ruling; the district prosecutor refiled another case on a conspiracy of a single count. The accused, as well as his business partner, were convicted. A panel of three judges ruled that Court had stated in the case of 1983 about the usage of beeper while tracking any suspected person, that the decision cannot justify twenty-four hours' surveillance without the police having a warrant.
The Court agreed the usage of a warrantless tracking device put on the accuse person's jeep to monitor his movements violated his rights to privacy. The Court's opinion was delivered by Justice Scalia, and he held that the installation of tracking devices on the accused person's jeep without a proper warrant lead to an unlawful search that gets protected in the Fourth Amendment. The government argued that there existed no reasonable privacy expectation on any individual movement on public roads but got rejected by the Supreme Court. Justice Sotomayor concurred with the Supreme Court's opinion.
Riley v. California (2014)
Riley was part of a gang group located in San Diego. In 2009, the accused person, along with others of his gang fired on another rival group, and then they all drove away. On August twenty-two, 2009, law enforcement officers pulled the accused over because he was driving a different car. Secondly, Riley's registration tags were expired; hence the police impounded the vehicle as required by law. Before any car gets impounded, the law requires law enforcement officers to conduct an inventory search to ascertain that every component of the vehicle was in place to avoid future claims. When performing the search, the police found two guns and had to arrest the accused of possession. The accused had his phone in his pocket during the time of the arrest.
A gang unit officer analyzed photographs as well as videos on his phone. The photos showed him making gang signs; the officer also discovered other gang indicia. The evidence got used as proof that he belonged to the gang, and he was tied to the shooting using ballistics tests and got charged with attempted murder and assault. Prior to trial, the accused brought a motion to dismiss all the evidence about gang affiliation acquired using his phone, but the Court denied his request. However, the Supreme court agreed that the evidence that got admitted during the trial from the accused person's phone found through the search violated Riley's Fourth Amendment rights that states that he should be free from any unreasonable searches.
Carpenter vs. United States (2018)
In 2011, four men were arrested by law enforcement officers in relation to the increasing cases of robberies. One of the four arrested men confessed to what he got accused of and gave the Federal Bureau of Investigation officers his phone number as well as the phone numbers of the other three accused persons. The transaction records the FBI obtained from the information they got included dates, time of calls along with the locations where the call started and ended through the help of cell towers. Using the data the FBI collected, the government charged Carpenter with aiding as well as abetting robbery. The accused person moved to suppress evidence of cell site on the grounds of Fourth Amendment rights and suggested that a warranty was needed by the FBI, and it had to be based on probable cause.
The question that arose was, do seizures and warrantless searches of mobile phone records, including location as well as the movement of mobile phone users, violate in any way the Fourth Amendment? It got ruled that the government warrantless search of the accused person's cell-site information violated the Fourth Amendment Rights the accused was supposed to enjoy. The five to four majority opinion was authored by Chief Justice Roberts. The majority of the Chief Justices acknowledged the Fourth Amendment protected property interest as well as reasonable privacy expectations.
In conclusion, having looked at how other Supreme Court Justice ruled out the cases that touched on the Fourth Amendment rights of a person, such as Katz v. United States (1967), United States v. Jones (2012), Riley v. California (2014), as well as the most recent Carpenter V. United States (2018). I concluded that law enforcement officers violated the accused person Fourth Amendment rights. Secondly, the search on her phone was illegal, and the evidence that was found, and presented in front of the Court, should not be immiscible. The accused privacy rights must be respected as stated in the Fourth Amendment, and not doing so is going against the constitution the law enforcement officers, and I swore to protect. However, the law enforcement officers did nothing wrong by drawing Jane Doe's blood for a test, regardless if she was unconscious since she posed a threat to public safety because she was driving under the influence of alcohol. Jane Doe's blood alcohol concentration was high, as proven by the test done. The law says that a licensed driver gave their implied consent to take a blood sample or a breathalyzer when they applied for a license.
