New Jersey Lawyer News
Warrant May be Necessary to Search Cell Phone Content
We rely on our cell phones for everything and there is no limit to the information we store on our cell phones. It is of course for this reason that when police perform an arrest the first thing they want to search is your cell phone.
But are police permitted to search your cell phone? Recently the Supreme Court has ruled on a cell phone search case that has had major ramifications across the country including in New Jersey. In Riley v California 134 S.Ct. 2473 (2014) that police must obtain a search warrant before searching digital data on arrestee’s cell phones. In the Riley case an individual was stopped for a traffic violation, and was arrested on a weapons charge. The cops took the individual back to the police station and searched his phone, obtaining evidence that he was involved in a recent shooting.