MA: Delay in searching cell phones lawfully seized wasn’t unreasonable

There was evidence defendants coordinated their actions while in separate cars, and that provided a strong inference they were in communication by cell phone, thus providing probable cause to search them. Police promptly seized the phones and then obtained search warrants for the phones. They did, however, take a long time to get around to it. This was not unreasonable because the phones were lawfully already in police custody and would stay there until the trial, so no further privacy interest of the defendants was impinged upon. Commonwealth v. Arthur, 2018 Mass. App. LEXIS 133 (Oct. 1, 2018).

This entry was posted in Cell phones, Reasonableness. Bookmark the permalink.

Comments are closed.