AK: Search of tenant’s computer found during SW for landlord’s computer was unreasonable

Alaska State Troopers had a search warrant for a computer in a house. While there, they find a computer that belonged to another who was the target’s tenant, so they decided to seize that computer, too, and search it. The search of a computer not named in the search warrant and clearly not belonging to the target of the search was unreasonable. Pohland v. State, 2018 Alas. App. LEXIS 265 (Nov. 23, 2018):

Erin A. Pohland, a former assistant attorney general, appeals her conviction for official misconduct, AS 11.56.850(a). The State alleged that Pohland used her position as legal advisor to the Alaska Labor Relations Agency to benefit her personal friend, Skye McRoberts.

Much of the evidence against Pohland was based on information obtained during a search of her personal computer. This computer was seized when the state troopers executed a search warrant for Skye McRoberts’s house — where Pohland was renting an apartment. The troopers were looking for evidence of McRoberts’s potential business and financial crimes, but they seized Pohland’s computer under the theory that McRoberts might have hidden evidence of her crimes in any computer or electronic storage device located within the house — even Pohland’s personal laptop, which was found in Pohland’s apartment.

Pohland contends that the search of her computer violated her rights under the Fourth Amendment and under the corresponding provision of the Alaska Constitution (Article I, Section 14). We agree with Pohland that the search of her computer was unlawful. Even when the police have a warrant to search a house, a personal computer must be treated differently from other objects or containers in the house. As the United States Supreme Court explained in Riley v. California, a police search of this kind of personal digital device “[will] typically expose to the government far more than the most exhaustive search of a [person’s] house”, because the device “not only contains in digital form many sensitive records previously found in the home”, but also “a broad array of private information never found in a home in any form”.

As we explain in this opinion, the troopers did not have probable cause to believe that Pohland’s personal laptop computer contained evidence of her landlord’s financial and business crimes. Moreover, rather than confining their search to documents and spreadsheets (i.e., computer files that were more likely to contain evidence of financial and business crimes), the troopers obtained much of the evidence against Pohland by combing through thousands of Pohland’s personal text messages. (Pohland was using her laptop computer as a backup device for the data stored on her smart phone.)

Orin Kerr criticizes the outcome as correct but the reasoning a mess in his Twitter feed.