The Post-Riley Search Warrant: Search Protocols and Particularity in Cell Phone Searches
Gershowitz, Adam M.
Citation analytics
How this journal article sits in the citation network, derived from CiteLaw's graph of published opinions.
Citations by decade
Courts citing this journal article
Most recently cited by4
- 2025Adam Michael Sullivan v. Commonwealth of Virginia Va. Ct. App.
- 2025Albert Peter Macasaet III v. State of Alaska Alaska Ct. App.
- 2023State v. Taylor Del. Super. Ct.
- 2017Moats v. State Md. App. Ct.
Counts reflect decisions in the CiteLaw corpus and may lag very recent opinions.
Abstract
Last year, in Riley v. California, the Supreme Court required police to procure a warrant before searching a cell phone. Unfortunately, the Court's assumption that requiring search warrants would be "simple" and very protective of privacy was overly optimistic. This article reviews lower court decisions in the year since Riley and finds that the search warrant requirement is far less protective than expected. Rather than restricting search warrants to the narrow evidence being sought, some magistrates have issued expansive warrants authorizing a search of the entire contents of the phone with no restrictions whatsoever.
Other courts have authorized searches of applications and data for which no probable cause existed. And even when district and appellate courts have found these overbroad search warrants to be defective, they have almost always turned to the good faith exception to save the searches and allow admission of the evidence. This Article calls on courts to take the Fourth Amendment's particularity requirement seriously before issuing search warrants for cell