CA6: Court details all the facts that make consent to search a cell phone voluntary

Defendant’s consent to search his cell phone for child pornography was voluntary. A host of facts support voluntariness. United States v. Mays, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 5246 (6th Cir. March 23, 2017)*:

The record makes clear that Mays’s Fourth Amendment argument is meritless. Mays signed the search-waiver form in three separate places. At no point did he inform the officers that the print on the form was too small to read, in sharp contrast to his response to the printed copy of his Craigslist ad. It stands to reason that, if Mays felt comfortable telling the investigators that he was unable to read the Craigslist ad, he would have felt just as comfortable telling them that he could not read the search-waiver form. That he never did complain suggests that Mays found the form to be legible. The police never threatened Mays; in fact, the record reflects that police intentionally adopted a “good cop” approach when they placed Mays in a “soft” interview room and engaged him in casual conversation. At one point, the district court noted, Mays even volunteered to show his investigators how to operate his cell phones. These are not the actions of a man who was coerced or tricked into signing a waiver of his Fourth Amendment rights. Because Mays knowingly and voluntarily signed the search-waiver form, we affirm the district court’s denial of his Fourth Amendment challenge.

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