Recent court rulings on cellphone searches present a spate of diametrically opposed Fourth Amendment holdings this past year. California and Florida, for example, have issued conflicting rules for the search of cellphones seized upon arrest, with the First and Seventh Circuits interpreting the law in different ways on the federal level. Ching, “Cellphone Question Headed for Supreme Court,” The Recorder (May 30, 2013); U.S. v. Wurie, ___F.3d___, No. 11-1792 (1st Cir. May 17, 2013); U.S. v. Flores-Lopez, ___F.3d___, No. 10-3803 (7th Cir. 2012).
The latest Fourth Amendment pairing of contradictory rulings pits the New Jersey Supreme Court (State v. Earls, No. A-53-11 (July 18, 2013), against the Fifth Circuit (In re Application of the U.S.A. for Historical Cell Site Data, No. 11-20884 (July 30, 2013), on the issue of cellphone location information. The opinions, issued less than two weeks apart this July, set the stage for a national examination of society’s rules on the use of a ubiquitous device, the cellphone, by criminal defendants.
