This defendant was employed by the Greenville office of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. A.K., a 15 year runaway, was captured and taken to juvenile detention. “On A.K.’s arrival, the center’s personnel took A.K.’s personal effects, including a bracelet, a ring, and her cell phone. The subsequent actions of Natalie Ausbie Reynolds, a supervisor for the Department, and Rebekah Thonginh Ross, one of the Department investigators, regarding the seizure and search of A.K.’s cell phone are the basis for this case in which Reynolds has been convicted of official oppression” for willfully conducting an illegal search of A.K.’s cell phone. The DFPS employees are not in loco parentis for purposes of conducting a search of a cell phone. Reynolds v. State, 2016 Tex. App. LEXIS 12672 (Tex.App.–Texarkana Nov. 30, 2016):
Based on precedent and this record, we conclude that A.K. had a reasonable expectation of privacy in her cell phone. Reynolds seems to claim, however, that, because A.K. had been known to use drugs and was allegedly having inappropriate relationships with adult men, that somehow changed A.K.’s expectation of privacy in her phone. Based on A.K.’s alleged behavior and lack of any known placement options at the time, Reynolds contends that she had an urgent responsibility to find A.K. a place to reside until the Department took custody of her and that she believed A.K.’s phone contained useful information that could assist her in that endeavor. Thus, her duty to find A.K. a place to reside overnight, until a court could intervene, amounted to exigent circumstances warranting an intrusion into the contents of A.K.’s cell phone. We need not find whether the proffered exigent circumstances warrant such an intrusion because there is evidence in this record that Reynolds’ motive was contrary to her claim, allowing the fact-finder to find this against Reynolds as well. For instance, (1) a placement facility had been found, yet Reynolds demanded that A.K.’s cell phone stay in the Department’s possession until she arrived the following morning; (2) there was testimony that Reynolds’ motive for taking possession of the cell phone was her desire to look through its contents for evidence of A.K.’s drug use or for contact information relating to alleged drug dealers; and (3) A.K.’s cell phone was never returned to her. Had Reynolds wanted the cell phone for the purpose she claims, she would have had no reason to continue in possession of the phone once a placement facility for A.K. had been located.
A.K.’s cell phone was not seized pursuant to an arrest, and there is no evidence of any warrant, court order, or consent to seize or search A.K.’s cell phone. Reynolds’ claim of exigent circumstances is not compelled by the evidence. For these reasons, we find that Reynolds’ actions were not authorized.
The codefendant was convicted of official oppression for turning a “protective sweep” of a house under exigency looking for a baby into a complete search of places a child could not be. The evidence supports the verdict. Ross v. State, 2016 Tex. App. LEXIS 12673 (Tex.App.–Texarkana Nov. 30, 2016).
Now suppose it was an overzealous cop or narc and not an overzealous child protective services worker? I haven’t heard of a cop getting charged with anything like this in a long time because, in law enforcement, the ends justifies the means and we sure don’t want to chill their zealousness, now, do we?
by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com / The Book www.johnwesleyhall.com
"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." —Me
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well." –Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others)
“I am still learning.” —Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)).
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848)
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced."
—Williams
v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold,
J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws,
or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence." —Mapp
v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that
bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the
police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater
than it is today."
— Terry
v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their
property."
—Entick
v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have
frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And
so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his
case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth
Amendment."
—United
States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated
here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth."
—Chapman
v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the
bottom of a turntable."
—Arizona
v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly
exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth
Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in
an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected."
—Katz
v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to
protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born
to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men
of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
—United
States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted
intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by
government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose
it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.”
—United
States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)
"You can't always get what you want /
But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need."
—Mick Jagger & Keith Richards
"In Germany, they first came for the communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for
the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came
for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration
camp]
“You know, most men would get discouraged by
now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
---Pepé Le Pew
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers,
is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which
reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that
those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being
judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting
out crime."
—Johnson
v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948)