Defendant voluntarily checked himself into a hospital, and a police officer came to talk to him. He was not restrained there by the police. In the course of the conversation, he \u201creluctantly\u201d agreed to let the officer look at his cell phone for missed calls, and he handed the phone over and watched the officer try to navigate through the phone. Being unfamiliar with the phone, the officer accidentally stumbled upon a text message defendant did not want him to read. This was a plain view and did not illegally exceed the extent of consent given. United States v. Dobbs, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 31171 (N.D. Ga. February 3, 2011):<\/p>\n
While it is clear that a warrantless search conducted pursuant to consent must remain within the scope of the consent given, United States v. Street, 472 F.3d 1298, 1308-09 (11th Cir. 2006), nothing in the facts of this case suggest that Agent McCleod exceeded the scope of Dobbs’ consent. Agent McCleod testified that he navigated to the missed call display as directly as possible, that it was necessary for him to navigate through a display of text messages in order to get to the missed call display, and while navigating, he did not view the content of any of the text messages. Agent McCleod’s actions are analogous to those of an officer walking through exterior areas of a home in order to access an interior room in a residence that he has been granted consent to search. Any information Agent McCleod saw incidentally while conducting the search within the scope of consent is admissible because it was in plain view on his path as he navigated to the display of missed calls directly from the screen which Dobbs had on display when he handed the phone to the agents.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Defense counsel filed a motion to suppress the search in his case, but defendant pled guilty on the advice of counsel and expressed no qualms about it. His claim of \u201cbad advice\u201d regarding the guilty plea just doesn\u2019t cut it. United States v. Thomas, 772 F. Supp. 2d 164 (D. D.C. 2011).*<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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