To those trying to sell cell phone apps to criminal defense lawyers:

For those criminal defense lawyers seeing cell phone apps targeted to them for marketing purposes (I got six emails from one in the last three months), ignore them. I started to write about it at the beginning and decided not to. The reason why I ignore them just showed up in a case today, albeit a case 10½ months old.

My clients usually come to me as a result of an arrest where they had no reasonable opportunity to call anybody at the time of their felony arrest, often at gunpoint. Also, even repeat clients are usually 7-10 years between cases. If they were to have the presence of mind to use a cell phone app to call my answering service during their evening drug arrest, they are inviting (1) serious difficulty from the police for not immediately putting their hands up and dropping the phone, and (2) a search incident of their cell phone. Marketing people don’t have a clue.

In United States v. Brown, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 186968 (E.D. Ky. May 3, 2012), the court held that a search incident of a cell phone was justified, inter alia, because “Brown ignored police commands to exit the truck while visibly manipulating a cell phone.” A person in the vehicle also fled, but that is surplusage. My review of the cases tells me that manipulating the cell phone should reasonably be interpreted by the police and the courts as an attempt to warn co-conspirators, thereby inviting a search of the phone to see whom.