United States v. Lustig

The United States Supreme Court held in Riley v. California, that the Fourth Amendment requires law enforcement officers to obtain a warrant before they may search an arrestee’s cell phone. The court held that binding appellate precedent at the time of the searches in defendant's case, which was two years before the Riley decision, provided a reasonable basis to believe the searches were constitutional. Therefore, the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies to the evidence obtained from those searches. The court adopted its sister circuits’ test for evaluating harmlessness in the context of a conditional guilty plea and concluded that defendant must be given an opportunity to vacate his guilty plea if he so wishes because the Government has not met its burden of establishing harmlessness under that test. The court held that the standard that governs harmless error review in Rule 11(a)(2) appeals is whether the government has proved beyond reasonable doubt that the erroneously denied suppression motion did not contribute to the defendant’s decision to plead guilty. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded. View "United States v. Lustig" on Justia Law