WA: Police officer texting off a drug dealer’s iPhone not constitutional violation

The police had a drug dealer’s iPhone in their possession, and defendant text messaged it. The officer pretended to be the drug dealer, and they text messaged back and forth. Defendant was arrested at a meet. None of this violated the Fourth Amendment or the Washington Constitution’s privacy provision. State v. Hinton, 169 Wn. App. 28, 280 P.3d 476 (2012):

¶17 The reasoning underlying the Wojtyna decision applies equally to Hinton’s text messages sent to Lee’s iPhone. Like in Wojtyna, Hinton transmitted messages to a device—Lee’s iPhone—over which he had no control. See Wojtyna, 70 Wn. App. at 692. By doing so, he voluntarily ran the risk that his messages, once delivered, would be received by whomever possessed the iPhone, and he had no control over what that person might do with that message. See Wojtyna, 70 Wn. App. at 692. Like in Wojtyna, the State did not monitor every message Hinton sent, “but rather, where his [message] was independently displayed and retrieved from the place to which he intended to send it.” Wojtyna, 70 Wn. App. at 692. See also State v. Goucher, 124 Wn.2d 778, 781, 784, 881 P.2d 210 (1994) (police detective did not violate article I, section 7 [or the Fourth Amendment] when he answered the telephone while executing a search warrant at a suspected drug dealer’s home, told the caller that he “was handling business,” and arranged a drug transaction with the caller; an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy when he “voluntarily expose[s] his desire to buy drugs to someone he did not know.”).

In State v. Roden, 169 Wn. App. 59, 279 P.3d 461 (2012), the court found implied consent under similar facts:

¶17 Under the implied consent reasoning of the court in Townsend, Roden impliedly consented to the recording of his text messages on Lee’s iPhone. Roden voluntarily sent the text messages to Lee’s iPhone with the expectation that Lee would read them. In doing so, he also anticipated that the iPhone would record and store the incoming messages to allow Lee to read them. Cell phones, like computers, are “message recording device[s],” a fact that Roden must have understood as a user of text messaging technology on cell phones. See Townsend, 147 Wn.2d 676. Accordingly, Sawyer did not violate Roden’s rights under the Act.