{"id":5369,"date":"2011-06-02T06:45:14","date_gmt":"2011-03-30T09:54:13","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-30T09:54:13","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=5369","title":{"rendered":"CO: Search of mislaid iPhone invalid where owner was coming back for it"},"content":{"rendered":"

An officer could not search a mislaid iPhone under the excuse that it was to find who the owner was since it was undisputed that the owner was coming back for it. People v. Schutter<\/a>, 249 P.3d 1123 (Colo. 2011):<\/p>\n

\nWe need not here decide whether, and if so, to what extent, police officers may conduct a warrantless examination of property that has been lost or mislaid but not abandoned. Under the undisputed facts of this case, the defendant\u2019s iPhone was neither abandoned, lost, nor mislaid such that the Aspen police would have had any cause to identify the owner to return it. Whether or not he knew the defendant\u2019s name, Officer Burg was aware from the moment the iPhone came into his possession that the defendant inadvertently left it in the store\u2019s locked restroom and knew precisely where it was; that his immediate demand for its return had been refused by the store clerk, who controlled access to the restroom; and that he left the area only when he was told by the clerk that he would have to come back later to retrieve his phone.<\/p>\n

According to Officer Burg\u2019s own undisputed testimony, the store clerk told him all of this when he handed over the phone. See People v. Rivas, 13 P.3d 315 (2000) (\u201cWhen controlling facts are undisputed, even though they are not specifically included in the findings of the trial court, the effect of those facts will also be treated as a matter of law.\u201d). Officer Burg also testified that it was 4:20 in the morning, and at that time, the defendant had been gone from the store for at most an hour. Under these circumstances, the officer had no grounds to believe the property\u2019s safe return required the discovery of any further information. Assuming, without deciding, that the Fourth Amendment could tolerate, under some set of circumstances, some kind of warrantless examination of a cell phone to ascertain how it might be returned to its owner, this case cannot present that set of circumstances.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5369\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}