CO: Unlawfully obtained cell phone PIN used to search phone required suppression

The police unlawfully obtained defendant’s cell phone’s 6-digit PIN number to access his phone after a failed “brute force attack” attempting to get into the phone. That required suppression of the cell phone. People v. d’Estree, 2024 COA 106, 2024 Colo. App. LEXIS 1210 (Oct. 3, 2024). The syllabus from the court:

A division of the court of appeals reverses the district court’s decision declining to suppress evidence obtained from the second of two warrants issued to search the contents of a defendant’s cell phone. While the second warrant would have met the independent source doctrine’s requirements, here police used an illegally obtained cell phone PIN code to execute the otherwise lawful second warrant. Thus, the district court should have excluded evidence obtained from the phone at trial. The division further holds that when police seek to obtain a cell phone PIN code without a defendant’s consent, in this case via a digital “brute force attack,” this constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment and requires authorization via a warrant. Finally, the division holds that the use of the PIN code here does not meet the requirements of the inevitable discovery doctrine as police abandoned the lawful search to find the PIN code pursuant to the second warrant and expedited their access to the phone using the PIN code illegally obtained pursuant to the first warrant. The defendant’s convictions are reversed, and the case is remanded to the district court to hold a new trial.