D.D.C.: A cell phone SW without PC in a felon in possession case is a general warrant because of its intrusiveness

Cell phone warrant for felon in possession case is quashed. No probable cause or nexus to the crime. Just because someone owns a cell phone doesn’t mean the government gets to search it. It is effectively a general warrant. United States v. Harris (In re Search of A Black Cellphone Currently Stored at the Metro. Police Department’s Evidence Control Branch in Wash. D.C. Under Rule 41), 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 149838 (D.D.C. July 6, 2026):

Anyone who has hesitated before handing their unlocked phone over to another person already understands a basic truth: few things contain more of the intimate details of our lives than a smartphone. A request to look through someone else’s phone is likely to meet a response befitting a request to accompany them into the examination room or confessional. So closely guarded are the contents of modern smartphones that most now come equipped with biometric security measures once associated with spy novels. Yet the very thing that makes smartphones so private–the vast amount of information they contain about our lives–also makes them fertile ground for criminal investigators. In the digital age, smartphones are where the evidence lives.

For that reason, the target of choice for law enforcement searches has shifted to cellphones. Having reviewed thousands of search warrants applications over the past decade, the Court has witnessed that move from the physical to the digital world. While search warrants for homes have not totally gone the way of the landline, they are no longer the primary means by which

investigators look for the evidence that matters most. Today, police are much more likely to seek that evidence on a smartphone than in a filing cabinet, dresser drawer, or basement box. And no doubt-and, in truth, thankfully-many crimes have been solved based on evidence found on cell-phones.

As technology and investigative techniques have evolved, so too have the grounds invoked by the government to support its search warrant applications. Because smartphones capture information about nearly every aspect of our lives, it is increasingly rare that law enforcement cannot advance some argument for why a suspect’s phone should be searched. That is unsurprising. The more our lives are stored on our phones, the easier it becomes to claim that evidence of crime may also be found there. The prospect, of course, is a society in which nearly every criminal suspect’s phone will be subject to search-a result that, however useful to law enforcement, is difficult to reconcile with the privacy interests the Fourth Amendment was designed to protect.

The government’s application in this case brings that concern into sharp focus. Defendant is charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm. The government seeks a warrant to search his cellphone for evidence of that offense. In support of its application, the government offers no particularized facts-either as to Defendant, his cellphone, or the actual circumstances of the crime he allegedly committed-demonstrating a fair probability that evidence of that crime will be lo-cated on Defendant’s cellphone. Instead, it relies only on the generalized experience of law en-forcement that evidence of illegal firearm possession is often found on the phones of felon-in-possession suspects. The affiant makes that representation in boilerplate language that could be used in any felon-in-possession case–or, with little effort, adapted to nearly any other criminal case–precisely because smartphones store the details of nearly every aspect of their owners’ lives, including, often, the government says, evidence of criminal conduct.

Because that falls short of establishing probable cause to search Defendant’s phone in thiscase, the Court will deny the government’s application for a warrant. And since the government asserts no other basis for its continued retention of Defendant’s phone, the Court will grant Defendant’s motion for the return of his phone under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(g). [Anything view or downloaded has to be destroyed, too.]

. . .

The answer here lies in principles significantly older than the smartphone. Just over 250 years ago, Chief Justice Pratt rebuked general warrants as “totally subversive of the liberty of the subject” because they empowered the Crown’s agents “to search wherever their suspicions may chance to fall.” Wilkes, 98 Eng. Rep. at 498. James Otis likewise decried writs of assistance for allowing customs officers to “enter our houses[] when they please” based on nothing more than “[b]are suspicion.” Collected Political Writings of James Otis, at 13. “[T]he Fourth Amendment was the founding generation’s response” to those “unrestrained search[es] for evidence of criminal activity.” Riley, 573 U.S. at 403. On the government’s telling, though, it may digitally rummage through the phone of any person it suspects of a crime, based only on the fact that smartphones now amass in one place all the information the Fourth Amendment was designed to protect. “Per-haps the construction of such a [digital] panopticon is wise. But [the Court] doubt[s] that the proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties would have been so eager to open their [phones] for royal inspection.” Maryland v. King, 569 U.S. 435, 482 (2013) (Scalia, J., joined by Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., dissenting).

[Note: I looked on D.D.C. website and courtlistener and couldn’t find a link. I’ll update if I find it. I did find a reference to the warrant, return filed June 18, 2026: 26-sw-196.]