Can Police Search My Cell Phone Without a Warrant?
Your Fourth Amendment right protects you from unreasonable searches and seizures. That extends to the contents of your cell phone.
Officers generally do not have the right to search a cell phone without a warrant. However, if a notice, message or photo is in plain view on the Home Screen an officer does not have to have a warrant to read what is in plain view.
In order for an officer to get a search warrant for a cell phone they must explain in the warrant what they are looking for in the cell phone with particularity.
The Supreme Court of the United States has said cell phones contain: “A digital record of nearly every aspect of our lives…” The Colorado Supreme Court has recognized that cell phones “hold for many Americans the privacies of life”and are therefore entitled to special protections from searches.
In Colorado the state Supreme Court Decided Pamela Kay Coke v. People
The kind of particularity required in a search warrant to search a person’s cell phone was recently analyzed by the Colorado Supreme Court this year in Coke v People. The search warrant in the Coke case was held to be unconstitutional because it permitted the kind “general search” of a cell phone considered to be “overbroad”in its scope and the warrant, therefore, failed the “particularity requirement” of the 4th Amendment.
Consenting to a search waives a person's Fourth Amendment Right. If an officer asks to see a person's cell phone and they hand over their phone without the officer having a warrant, that person has waived their fourth amendment right.
Before consenting to a search of your cell phone CALL PALOMA LAW TODAY 720-900-4861.
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