United States v. Camou

Defendant pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography and appealed the district court's denial of his motion to suppress images of child pornography found on his cell phone. Defendant's cell phone was searched without a warrant at a Border Patrol checkpoint's security offices. The court concluded that the search of the phone was not roughly contemporaneous with arrest and, therefore, was not a search incident to arrest given both the passage of one hour and twenty minutes between arrest and search and the seven intervening acts between arrest and search that signaled the arrest was over; the search of the cell phone is not excused under the exigency exception to the warrant exception; cell phones are non-containers for purposes of the vehicle exception to the warrant requirement and the search of defendant's cell phone cannot be justified under that exception; the inevitable discovery exception to the exclusionary rule is not applicable in this case pursuant to United States v. Mejia; and the good faith exception is inapplicable where the government failed to assert that the agent relied on anyone or anything in conducting his search of the phone, let alone that any reliance was reasonable. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's denial of defendant's motion to suppress. View "United States v. Camou" on Justia Law