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Michigan Supreme Court: Unrestricted phone searches violate Fourth Amendment
252 mikece 58 8/26/2025, 5:36:57 PM reclaimthenet.org ↗
IANAL, just some guy who gets bored and reads CaseNet. Yes, I am aware that this is not a sign of a healthy mind.
Well, that gets into the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine, but we're not doing a full criminal procedure law school course today . . .
Ironically, I heard more than one detective say that when they "dumped" a phone like that, they rarely found much useful evidence. There's just too much information on any given cell phone to be able to go through it all. So, in the end, their fishing expeditions end up being a waste of time and resources.
"Fruit of the poisonous tree" simply means the entire chain, the initial evidence that was improperly acquired and anything that was discovered based upon it, gets thrown out. If a warrant was issued to dump the full contents of your phone, and they used location metadata from your photo library to start determining other locations to search and got warrants for those, then that entire chain of evidence gets thrown out if the court finds the initial warrant for your phone was invalid.
Who me? I assure you I don't.
In the particular case I described above there were some factors about who the person was that make me pretty confident the police were wanting to sniff around for something juicier (though because of his situation, even the accusation of domestic violence was going to be enough to ruin certain things for him, even if nothing ever came of it). That's SOP for many things where, for example, certain departments train officers to use traffic stops as pretexts to "elevate" the encounter to a felony arrest. They don't care that the guy failed to come to a complete stop at that stop sign, but they like their chances of getting consent to search his vehicle and finding (or, in the egregious cases, planting) something else.
Edit: I see that you weren't replying directly to me. Sorry about that.
Our standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt" and ideally in a working justice system, judges should be throwing out any evidence which is prejudicial. So your detective has a general motive to find as much evidence as possible, overwhelming evidence, ideally, such that after all legal challenges have been passed through there is still enough evidence left on the table to concretely prove a case.
Obviously there's a lot of places our justice system can and does break down, but it is generally designed on the concept everyone involved in prosecution and defense should work to create the best possible case for their understanding.
What normally happens in cases like this is that each side barter with what they have (DA: "we went through his phone and found photos of him with guns, drugs and money" vs. PD: "the search was illegal, if you pursue this I'll file for suppression") to get the longest sentence they can (DA) vs. the shortest sentence (PD) on a plea deal.
I think the statistic is maybe 1% of criminal cases go to trial?
With how many laws we have on the books, everyone on the planet can be found guilty of some violation if their life is examined with a fine toothed comb
In my experience, yes, in many cases it was more laziness than something nefarious. Police often have a theory of the case in their head that just doesn't make it onto the affidavit. Things that seem obvious to them after investigating the case for some length of time are not as obvious to someone seeing it for the first time on a search warrant affidavit. Fishing expeditions happen, no doubt, but let's also remember Hubbard's corollary to Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system." They get in a hurry, don't read the affidavit with fresh eyes, and forge ahead anyway because they're under pressure to close cases quickly. Not that that's a good thing, but it's distinct from people who are intent on just breaking the law and violating people's rights.
>Authorities secured a warrant to search his phone, but the document placed no boundaries on what could be examined.
>It permitted access to all data on the device, including messages, photos, contacts, and documents, without any restriction based on time period or relevance. Investigators collected over a thousand pages of information, much of it unrelated to the accusation.
Yeah that's pretty absurd.
Who has said this? People are saying that a ruling of the Michigan Supreme Court won't stop Michigan police officers from getting search warrants without limitations? How did these people come to that conclusion?
You know, if you're a Homeland Security agent you have to tell us, right?
Now the downside is that since they rely on the Federal Constitution in the ruling rather than the Michigan one, if the Supreme Court ever rules differently, this precedent will be overturned, even in Michigan.
"Our state Constitution, Const 1963, art 1, § 11, also guards against unreasonable searches and seizures. In fact, as amended by voter initiative in the 2020 general election, Const 1963, art 1, § 11 specifically provides that “[n]o warrant to . . . access electronic data or electronic communications shall issue without describing them . . . .” However, defendant’s claims below rested solely on Fourth Amendment principles. Therefore, we have no occasion to consider whether the language of Const 1963, art 1, § 11 provides broader protection than the Fourth Amendment in this context. Compare People v Lucynski, 509 Mich 618, 634 n 6; 983 NW2d 827 (2022) (noting that Const 1963, art 1, § 11 is interpreted coextensively with the Fourth Amendment unless there is a compelling reason for a different interpretation), with People v Bullock, 440 Mich 15, 30-31; 485 NW2d 866 (1992) (concluding that a textual difference between the Eighth Amendment and Const 1963, art 1, § 16 supported a broader interpretation of our state constitutional provision)."
So really the downside is that the defendant's lawyer didn't raise the state constitutional issue (which looks even clearer).
Someone tell me how many prosecutors in the history of the USA have been criminally convicted for sending known innocent persons to prison.
They really didn't like it when cops showed up and took their furniture (think filing cabinet) because "it might contain evidence of sedition".
Absurd or not, it's what the Fourth Amendment requires, at least in spirit. The warrant must specify the scope of the search in advance ("...and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.")
Police work is not supposed to be easy. When police work is easy, that's basically the definition of a police state.
No, this is silly. That's not how search warrants ever work. The Fourth Amendment imposes no such "only search where labeled" requirement. It does, however, mean that police can only search areas where they are likely to find evidence of the commission of the crime that is alleged in the affidavit. For example, if the crime is theft of a full-size refrigerator and police have probable cause to believe that the stolen refrigerator is located at the residence of the accused, they can go into his house and look for the refrigerator anywhere that a refrigerator could be. That does not, however, given them the right to go rifling through his file cabinet or his underwear drawer, unless they have specific, articulable facts (i.e., not just a hunch) that there is probable cause that some other evidence of the commission of that crime will be found in such places.
What does that look like when searching a suspect's cell phone? Obviously every case is going to be different, but the point is that warrants cannot be utterly boundless. Such "general warrants" are one of the reasons the American colonists listed as a grievance against King George in the Declaration of Independence and today issuing such warrants would be considered prosecutable malfeasance in office. if police want to use search warrants as evidence-gathering tools they have to follow the law or convince the legislature to change it.
EDIT: Actually, consider this as an example.
California Penal Code § 653m says the following (subsection b): "Every person who, with intent to annoy or harass, makes repeated telephone calls or makes repeated contact by means of an electronic communication device, or makes any combination of calls or contact, to another person is, whether or not conversation ensues from making the telephone call or contact by means of an electronic communication device, guilty of a misdemeanor. Nothing in this subdivision shall apply to telephone calls or electronic contacts made in good faith or during the ordinary course and scope of business."
So let's say jilted boyfriend decides to ring up his ex-girlfriend a couple dozen times in the wee hours of the morning, but he uses something to block his caller ID. In that case, there might be evidence on his phone that he dialed the girlfriend's phone number when she claims the harassing phone calls came in. So can the police search his phone for evidence that he called her number? Absolutely. Can they look through everything on his phone (pictures, notes, settings, etc.)? Absolutely not.
Warrants establish such restrictions all the time. The classic example is what's called the sugar bowl doctrine. In a nutshell: if you're looking for stolen televisions you can't look in the sugar bowl. If, to torture the metaphor further, you see car keys peaking out of the top of the sugar bowl you can apply for a further warrant. In the case of forensically investigating a phone, you would just keep the forensically-sound copy of the phone's data while you waited for a judge's permission to poke around in that folder.
How do you think a warrant couldn’t establish such restrictions when it’s already loosening existing restrictions on the police?
https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone
Also friendly reminder that "the Constitution does not grant aliens any protections when trying to enter the United States."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_ex_rel._Knauff_v...
Since the western side of the state is quite obviously more than 100 miles from Canada I had to look this up. Apparently it's because the lakes count as international borders. That seems pretty crazy to me, especially in the case of Lake Michigan.
Lake Michigan is considered a "coast" (which Chicagoans kind of like! See: "Third coast" stuff), but that bizarrely puts their jurisdiction ~70 miles into the Illinois cornfields based on them saying they treat the lake as a "coast".