Question
Lindsay Lowhand was stopped for a traffic violation, which eventually led to her arrest on weapons charges. An officer searching Lowhand incident to her arrest
Lindsay Lowhand was stopped for a traffic violation, which eventually led to her arrest on weapons charges. An officer searching Lowhand incident to her arrest seized a cell phone from her pants pocket. The officer accessed information on the phone and noticed repeated street gang terms. At the police station two hours later, a detective examined the phone's content. Based on the photos and videos that the detective found, Massachusetts charged Lowhand in connection with a shooting that had occurred a few weeks earlier and sought to enhance the charges (and the sentence) based on Lowhand's gang membership. Lowhand's lawyers filed a Motion to Suppress all the evidence that the police had obtained from her cell phone. The trial judge denied the motion and Lowhand was convicted. The jury convicted Lowhand on all counts and she was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. May the police search digital information on a cell phone seized from an individual who has been arrested without a warrant? Even though the cell phone cannot itself be used as a weapon to harm the arresting officer, information on the cell phone remains vulnerable to remote wiping or data encryption. Cell phones, like the contents in an arrestees' pockets work no substantial intrusion on privacy beyond the arrest itself. Can the police search the cellphone of an individual whom they arrest without a search warrant?
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