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A California appellate court took a recent California Supreme Court decision a step further on Monday, giving police broader authority for warrantless cell phone searches. Police properly searched a DUI arrestee's cell phone, finding pictures, texts, and e-mails that led to the 2009 seizure of a large cache of weapons in Santa Clara County, Calif., the 6th District Court of Appeal ruled.
The three-judge panel overturned a magistrate's decision to suppress the evidence from the cell phone search in People v. Nottoli, H035902.
Nottoli follows the California Supreme Court's split decision last January in People v. Diaz, which OK'd the search of a cell phone taken from an arrestee's pocket.
"We discern no principled reason to distinguish between a cellphone found on an arrestee's person during a search incident to arrest and a cellphone found in a passenger compartment during a vehicular search incident to arrest," wrote 6th District Justice Franklin Elia in Monday's ruling.
A sheriff's deputy arrested Reid Nottoli on suspicion of driving under the influence of a controlled substance on Highway 1 on Dec. 6, 2009. While conducting an inventory search of the silver Acura Nottoli was driving, the deputy found his BlackBerry and searched through it. He said he was alarmed by the pictures he saw -- including a screen saver showing someone who looked like Nottoli holding two potentially illegal assault rifles -- as well as text and e-mail messages. The discovery led to the largest weapons raid in Santa Cruz County in a decade, according to the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
At a later suppression hearing, a magistrate found that the impoundment of the vehicle and routine inventory search were justified, but balked at the search of the cell phone. "I think there was an expectation of privacy that the defendant had for his BlackBerry," he said, according to a transcript cited in the decision, "that there were not sufficient grounds to authorize the deputy to open that BlackBerry up and, therefore, anything that was discovered as a result of that activity would be suppressed."
But the 6th District panel disagreed. The sheriff's deputies had "unqualified authority" to search the passenger compartment of the vehicle and "any container found therein ... including Reid's cellphone," Elia wrote. "It is up to the U.S. Supreme Court to impose any greater limits on officers' authority to search incident to arrest."
Justice Eugene Premo and Santa Clara County Judge Patricia Lucas, sitting by designation, concurred.
Nottoli, 26, died on Sept. 4, after the case was argued and submitted. But the panel issued an opinion, it noted in a footnote, "because it raises important issues of public interest that are likely to recur in other cases." Nottoli's father, Barry Nottoli, was a co-defendant, and the appeal court ordered the proceedings against him to resume.
The case is People v. Nottoli, H035902.
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the kat
So if I am a cop and stop someone legally and find whatever, I can follow up on what I discovered? So I stop a lawyer and find a list of clients on his cell phone, clients who I know or have reason to know have a criminal pass. Can I open his cell phone files and texts to these clients? What about his laptop? Any information that is not discoverable? Privilege you say, not to these judges.
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