E.D.Tenn.: SI of text messages on cell phone was valid, relying on 1969 case

Looking at defendant’s cell phone text messages was permitted by the search incident doctrine. United States v. Grooms, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10824 (E.D. Tenn. January 3, 2011):

The United States acknowledged that a search incident to an arrest must be “substantially contemporaneous” with the arrest and confined to the immediate vicinity of the arrest, citing Shipley v. California, 395 U.S. 818, 819, 89 S. Ct. 2053, 23 L. Ed. 2d 732 (1969). But the United States also argues that “contemporaneous” is not synonymous with “simultaneous.” At least under the circumstances described in this case, the court agrees. No less than the United States Supreme Court has held that a search and seizure that could have been made on the spot at the time of the defendant’s arrest may legally be conducted later when the defendant arrives at the detention facility, United States v. Edwards, 415 U.S. 800, 803, 94 S. Ct. 1234, 39 L. Ed. 2d 771 (1974). Deputy Laudwick easily could have viewed the text messages on defendant’s cell phone while he and defendant were at defendant’s house at the time of his arrest. That being so, the later retrieval of the text messages at the sheriff’s office was proper under the authority of Edwards, supra.

[Note: This case follows, without saying so, the rationale of the California Supreme Court in Diaz that pre-technology cases control. Look, if a court has to cite a search incident case from 1969 to justify a search incident of a 2010 cell phone, then that case is meaningless. Maybe the court knows it, but a USMJ without a creative spark to see the law developing should constrain his or her work to detention hearings and stay away from Fourth Amendment v. technology because it is moving so damn fast. I compare this case to the multitude of USMJs’ limiting the government for cell phone tracking information, and I wonder what this guy is thinking.]