United States v. Chad Camou
773 F.3d 932, 2014 WL 6980135, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 23347 (2014)
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Rule of Law:
A warrantless search of an arrestee's cell phone is not a valid search incident to arrest if it is remote in time and place from the arrest, particularly when separated by a significant time delay and intervening events. Furthermore, a cell phone is not considered a 'container' that can be searched without a warrant under the vehicle exception.
Facts:
- On August 1, 2009, U.S. Border Patrol agents stopped a truck driven by Chad Camou at a checkpoint.
- Inside the truck, agents discovered an undocumented immigrant, Alejandro Martinez-Ramirez, hiding on the floor.
- At approximately 10:40 p.m., agents arrested Camou and his girlfriend, Ashley Lundy, and seized a cell phone from the truck's cab.
- Camou, Lundy, and Martinez-Ramirez were moved to the checkpoint's security offices for booking and interviews.
- Lundy informed agents that Camou used the cell phone to communicate with a smuggler known as 'Mother Teresa'.
- While Lundy was being interviewed, the cell phone rang several times, with the caller ID displaying 'Mother Teresa'.
- At 12:00 a.m., one hour and twenty minutes after the arrest, Agent Walla searched the contents of Camou's cell phone, including call logs, videos, and photos.
- During the search, Agent Walla discovered approximately 30 to 40 images of child pornography.
Procedural Posture:
- A federal grand jury indicted Chad Camou for possession of child pornography.
- In the U.S. District Court (trial court), Camou filed a motion to suppress the evidence found on his cell phone, arguing the warrantless search was unconstitutional.
- The district court denied the motion to suppress.
- Camou entered a conditional guilty plea, which preserved his right to appeal the denial of his suppression motion.
- The district court sentenced Camou to thirty-seven months in prison.
- Camou (appellant) appealed the district court's denial of his motion to suppress to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
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Issue:
Does a warrantless search of an arrestee's cell phone, conducted one hour and twenty minutes after the arrest and after the arrestee has been secured in a different location, violate the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches?
Opinions:
Majority - Pregerson, Circuit Judge
Yes, the warrantless search of Camou's cell phone violates the Fourth Amendment. A search incident to arrest must be spatially and temporally incident to the arrest, meaning it must be 'roughly contemporaneous' with it. The one-hour-and-twenty-minute delay between Camou's arrest and the search, combined with numerous intervening events—such as moving the suspects to a security office, handcuffing them, booking them, and conducting interviews—rendered the search too remote to be considered incident to the arrest. The exigencies that justify a warrantless search, such as officer safety or preventing evidence destruction, had dissipated. The search also cannot be justified under the vehicle exception, as the Supreme Court's reasoning in Riley v. California establishes that cell phones, with their vast storage of private information, are not analogous to ordinary physical 'containers' that may be searched when found in a vehicle.
Analysis:
This decision significantly extends the privacy protections for cell phones established in Riley v. California. By explicitly holding that a cell phone is not a 'container' for the purposes of the vehicle exception, the court closes a potential loophole that could have allowed warrantless searches of phones found in vehicles. This reinforces the principle that cell phones hold a unique and heightened expectation of privacy due to the sheer quantity and quality of personal data they contain. The case also solidifies the strict temporal limitations on the search-incident-to-arrest doctrine, emphasizing that any significant delay or intervening police activity after securing the arrestee will render a subsequent warrantless search unreasonable.
