Search & seizure; Motion to suppress; Cell phone search warrant validity; The particularity requirement; People v Carson; People v Brcic

Holding that the search warrant at issue was facially invalid for failing “to comply with the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement,” the court concluded that the trial court erred in denying defendant-Perales’s motion to suppress the evidence obtained from his cell phone. In Carson, while the Michigan Supreme Court “declined to issue ‘a per se rule of specificity that applies to all cell-phone searches,’ it identified certain guidelines” to be considered. It stated “that ‘a search warrant should be as particular as the circumstances presented permit and consistent with the nature of the item to be searched.’” It noted that while specifying “‘the crime under investigation is necessary,’” it is usually not “‘sufficient to ensure adequate particularity in the context of a cell-phone search warrant.’” In addition, it “identified temporal and data-category limitations as means of particularization.” The court made it clear that law enforcement has “‘the obligation to provide the most specific description possible and to support a request to search each category of data mentioned in a warrant affidavit.’” The search warrant here “specified the crime under investigation as AWIM,” but the language used “was too broad to ensure that executing officers could ‘reasonably direct their search at uncovering evidence related to the criminal activity identified in the warrant.’ [It] broadly authorized a search of ‘the entire contents of said cell phone,’ which included, but was not limited to ‘any and all photos, videos, music, text messages, contact numbers, call history, location history and any recoverable deleted information found’” in the device as well as any evidence detailing contact between Perales and the complainant. Further, the supporting affidavit did not “supply any meaningfully limiting instructions or context to aid in particularizing the property to be searched.” It failed to “direct officers to seek data from particular dates surrounding the alleged offense and instead vaguely references evidence ‘leading up to, during and after the incident.’” The court concluded that the warrant constituted “a general warrant of Perales’s phone by authorizing the search of nearly any kind of data likely to be found without temporal limitation or adequate evidentiary support.” Reversed and remanded.