PHOENIX β Leaving your cellphone in an apartment where you have been a guest doesnβt give police the right to search it without a warrant, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled Monday.
In a decision with major privacy implications, the justices also said the fact that someone does not lock his or her cellphone with a code is not an invitation for anyone, including the police, to see whatβs in it.
βPersonal belongings need not be locked for a legitimate expectation of privacy to exist,β wrote Justice Ann Scott Timmer for the unanimous court. βCellphones are intrinsically private, the failure to password protect access to them is not an invitation for others to snoop.β
She also rejected the contention by prosecutors that they should be able to use what they found on the phone because officers had a good-faith belief that it actually belonged to the owner of the apartment, who was dead.
Mondayβs ruling ends efforts by Pima County prosecutors to bring Robin Peoples to trial on charges of necrophilia and rape.
βThere is insufficient evidence to prove the crime in court without being able to present the video and the defendantβs statement,β said Kellie Johnson, the chief criminal deputy county attorney.
Court records show Peoples lived next door to his girlfriend. They say he frequently spent time in her Tucson apartment.
About three months into the relationship, he spent a night there and used his cellphone to film the couple having sex.
The womanβs daughter, who lives in the same apartment complex, found her unresponsive in bed the next morning while Peoples was in the bathroom. She called 911 and Peoples ran from the apartment to direct the paramedics, leaving his cellphone behind.
She ultimately was pronounced dead. Peoples, meanwhile, went to a friendβs apartment.
A Tucson police officer, looking for medical information on the woman, found a cellphone in the bathroom. Assuming it belonged to the victim, he turned it on to search her contacts.
What he found was a paused video of the woman on her back in bed, mostly naked. When he pressed play, he watched part of a video showing Peoples having sex with a seemingly unresponsive woman.
When Peoples returned to get his cellphone he was arrested. He subsequently made statements that he had sex with the woman during the early morning hours, filmed it with his phone, and said she βprobablyβ was dead, though he βthought she was breathing.β
A trial judge refused to let police use either the video or any statements Peoples made to prosecute him on necrophilia and rape charges. The state Court of Appeals reversed, ruling that police did not need a warrant because Peoples did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the womanβs apartment or for his cellphone.
Timmer said the appellate judges were wrong on both counts.
She said the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that cellphones occupy a special place in peopleβs lives and deserve special protection β even when someone has been arrested.
βThey essentially serve as their ownersβ digital alter egos,β Timmer wrote, calling them βminicomputers that contain a digital record of nearly every aspect of peopleβs lives, from the mundane to the intimate.β
βThe fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought,β she said, citing the U.S. Supreme Court.
Timmer also said the fact that Peoples did not have his cellphone on him when it was found by police does not change anything. She said the fact remains that it still contains βthe privacies of lifeβ that are entitled to Fourth Amendment protection against warrantless searches.
βThat privacy is no less worthy of protection when a cellphone is outside a personβs immediate control,β Timmer wrote.
She also specifically noted that while Peoples left his cellphone in the womanβs apartment, he had left to direct paramedics. And Timmer pointed out that when he returned a short time later, he specifically asked the officer at the door to retrieve the phone.
What all that means, the justice said, is that Peoples did not abandon the phone.
