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| People v. Diaz | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Argued October 5, 2010 Decided January 3, 2011 | |
| Full case name | The People v. Gregory Diaz |
| Citation(s) | 51 Cal. 4th 84; 244 P.3d 501; 119 Cal. Rptr. 3d 105; 2011 |
| Case history | |
| Prior history | Review granted, California Court of Appeals decision unpublished |
| Holding | |
| Affirmed the judgment of the Court of Appeals denying motion to suppress evidence obtained without warrant from Diaz's cell phone upon lawful custodial arrest. | |
| Court membership | |
| Chief Justice | Joyce L. Kennard (Acting) |
| Associate Justices | Kathryn Werdegar, Ming Chin, Marvin R. Baxter, Carol Corrigan, Ronald M. George, Carlos R. Moreno |
| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Chin, joined by Baxter, Corrigan, George |
| Concurrence | Kennard |
| Concur/dissent | Werdegar, joined by Moreno |
| Laws applied | |
| U.S. Const. Amend. IV | |
'People v. Diaz' (51 Cal. 4th 84; 244 P.3d 501; 119 Cal. Rptr. 3d 105; 2011) was a landmark Supreme Court of California decision filed January 3, 2011 which dealt with a delayed warrantless search of information contained within a cell phone upon lawful arrest. In a sting operation conducted by local police, the defendant, Gregory Diaz, was arrested for the sale of the illicit drug Ecstasy, and his cell phone, containing incriminating evidence, was seized and searched without warrant. In trial court, Diaz motioned to suppress the information obtained from his cell phone, but was denied on the grounds that the search of his cell phone was incident to a lawful arrest.The California Court of Appeals affirmed the court's decision, a ruling which was later affirmed by the California Supreme Court.[1]
Facts
[edit]At about 2:50 PM on April 25, 2007, the defendant Gregory Diaz was witnessed participating in an illicit Ecstacy transaction with a police informant. Diaz drove to the location of sale previously agreed upon with the police informant, and the sale took place shortly after the informant got in the backseat of the car the Diaz was driving. Immediately the completion of the sale, Senior Deputy Sheriff Victor Fazio of the Ventura County Sherff's Department, who was listening in to the transaction through a wire on the informant, pulled Diaz's car over and arrested him for conspiracy to sell drugs. Six tablets of Ecstasy and a small amount of marijuana was found on Diaz's person, as well as his cell phone.[1]
At the Sheriff's station, a detective took Diaz's cell phone and handed it over to Fazio, who admitted it into evidence. At about 4:18 PM, Fazio interviewed the defendant, who denied the charges against him. After the interview, at about 4:23 PM, 90 minutes after the seizure of the phone, Fazio looked through Diaz's text messages and found a message that read, "6 4 80," which Fazio took to mean "6 pills of Ecstasy for $80." Diaz confessed to the crime shortly after he was shown the text message by Fazio.[1]
Lower Court Decision
[edit]In trial court, Diaz petitioned to suppress the evidence found on his cell phone, citing Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure. The trial court denied the motion, citing the fact that "Incident to the arrest, search of his person and everything that turned up is really fair game in terms of being evidence of a crime or instrumentality of a crime or whatever the theory might be." Upon denial of suppression, Diaz took a guilty plea to transportation of a controlled substance.[1]
Decision and Rationale
[edit]The Court held that seizure of Diaz's cell phone was lawful due to the fact that seziure occured during a search incident to arrest - an exception of the Fourth Amendment. The Court reasoned that historical precedent had been established via several cases brought to the U.S. Supreme Court; precedents that have allowed officers to seize objects under an arrestee's control and perform searches of those objects without warrant for the purpose of preserving evidence.[1]
In doing so, The Court applied the case United States v. Robinson, which held that the unwarranted search and seizure of a cigarette carton on Robinson's body was valid. The Court, with Robinson in mind, contended that only arrest is required for a search of an arrestee's person and belongings. The court then proceeds to apply United States v. Edwards to hold that the search was valid despite the fact that it had occured 90 minutes after arrest. In the Edwards case, the clothing of an arrestee were seized 10 hours after arrest in order to preserve evidence that might be present on the clothes in the form of paint chips.[1]
The Court then considers the case United States v. Chadwick, which held that any object associated with an arrestee may be searched incident to arrest - a precendent that supported the claim that the search of Diaz's cell phone was valid incident to his arrest. Under the Chadwick ruling, Diaz's cell phone was not only on his person but also directly associated with him at the time, and thus a delayed search of the the phone 90 minutes after the seizure was valid.[1]
Given these three cases, the Court concluded that the search and seizure of Diaz's cell phone was valid.
Concurrence and Dissent
[edit]Kennard Concurrence
[edit]Acting Chief Justice Kennard concurred with the court's judgement, with a few exceptions. Kennard noted that in making the judgements regarding search upon arrest that formed the precedents for this particular case, the Supreme Court probably did not have cell phones in mind, due to the fact that Robinson, Edwards and Chadwick were decided in an era before mobile communications. However, Kennard then proceeds to contend that it is not the lower court's responsibility to challenge the decisions of the Supreme Court, but only apply its precedents until the Supreme Court decides to revise them, as the Supreme Court warned in the case Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/Am.[1]
Werdegar Dissent
[edit]Werdegar focuses his dissent on three key arguments: the cell phone as a relatively new piece of technology, the fact that the search of the cell phone occured some time after the phone was confiscated, and the precedents cited by the Court do not apply to the cell phone as a "container."[1]
Werdegar argues that at the time the cases United States v. Robinson and United States v. Edwards were decided, the Supreme Court did not have enough information about cell phones to establish a precedent for their search. In this, "containers" mentioned in the cases, such as clothing or a cigarette carton, are not analogous to the cell phone - which could potentially contain wealth of private electronic data. Werdegar was especially concerned that the size of cell phone storage, at the time of writing, could contain "thousands of images or other digital files."[1]
Werdegar proceeds reasons that the search occurred after the cell phone had already been seized from Diaz, meaning that the phone was not actually under Dia's control, effectively negating the preservation of evidence exemption of the Fourth Amendment.[1]
In a more philosophical argument, Werdegar contends that the privacy limitations of search and seizure upon arrest only extends to the arrestee's body - and not the intangible data contained within the cell phone, which holds far more information than any container or item that could lawfully be seized. In allowing such broad seizures, Werdegar worries that the ruling will potentially give police a "carte blanche" and the legal right to search and seize any article or object belonging to an arrestee incident to arrest. [1]
Court's Response to Dissent
[edit]Responding to Werdegar's contention that a cell phone is distinct from a cigarette carton or clothes on an arrestee's body, the Court cites United States v. Ross. In Ross, the Supreme Court held that no privacy existed in packages, regardless of their type, shape or size, in the search of a car. Applied to Diaz, the Court reasons that a cell phone is no different from any other container on Diaz's person. For the purposes of applying the past precedents of Robinson and Chadwick, the court continues, Diaz's cell phone is a container like any other.[1]
In response to the argument that a cell phone has a much larger storage capacity than any item that Diaz could have carried on his person, the Court asserted that there was no evidence that Diaz's phone had a significant storage capacity. Even if it did have a large storage capacity, the Court reasons, the size of an item shouldn't be relevant in the sense that it would make it increasingly difficult for law enforcement to uphold the law when such distinctions in container size can be made.[1]
Considering the Dissent's contention that data on the cell phone was theoretically not on Diaz's body, the Court cites Supreme Court precedent that allows any object found on an arrestee's body to be searched regardless of externalities. The location of the data is irrelevant insofar as the the container was associated with and under Diaz's control.[1]
Lastly, the Court argues that despite the fact the search occured after 90 minutes to arrest, past precedent in United States v. Edwards has established the legitimacy of that particular search.[1]
Implications
[edit]In this age where cell phones are increasingly prevalent, the Diaz ruling is particularly troubling. Many experts in the field argue that, unlike traditional objects that can be lawfully seized, a cell phone contains far more personal data, incriminating or otherwise - and that problem with the Diaz ruling, as stated by Judge Moreno in the dissenting opinion, is that it "goes much further, apparently allowing police carte blanche, with no showing of exigency, to rummage at leisure through the wealth of personal and business information that can be carried on a mobile phone or handheld computer merely because the device was taken from an arrestee’s person."[2][1]
Reception
[edit]On February 18, 2011, shortly after the People v. Diaz decision, a bill (SB 914) penned by former Senator Leno was introduced to the California Legislature. SB 914 mandated that a warrant was necessary to search an arrestee's cell phone, and was voted on in both the California Senate and Assembly, passing both with a bipartisan vote of 31-4 and 28-9, respectively. Despite its success in the legislature, the bill was vetoed by Governor Brown on October 9, 2011, and is pending re-submission into the California Legislature.[3]
A similar case, United States v. Flores-Lopez, was argued in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals on February 29th, 2012, upholding the unwarranted search of a cell phone upon arrest with reasoning comparable to that in People v. Diaz in the entirety of the 7th Circuit.[4]