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Michigan Supreme Court: Unrestricted phone searches violate Fourth Amendment

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558 points mikece | 4 comments | 26 Aug 25 17:36 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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pcaharrier ◴[26 Aug 25 18:22 UTC] No.45030323[source]▶
Several years ago I had the opportunity to observe when a detective came to a magistrate's office to petition for a search warrant. The warrant sought to search the contents of a person's phone, essentially without any limitations. The alleged crime was assault and battery on a family member. When asked "What is your probable cause that the phone is likely to contain evidence of the commission of this crime?" the detective had basically nothing to say (having put nothing to that effect in the affidavit for the search warrant) other than some vague (cooked up on the spot?) statements about the "mobile nature of our modern society and the fact that cell phones are everywhere and everyone has one." The magistrate denied the warrant, but it's a sad testament to the propensity of law enforcement to cut corners that that search warrant affidavit was far from the last one I saw that targeted the cell phone of an accused and claimed that it was necessary to search the entire contents of the phone.
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righthand ◴[26 Aug 25 18:58 UTC] No.45030727[source]▶
That’s because law enforcement is encourage to give least amount of effort to find any kind of damning evidence that a DA can use. The detective doesn’t care about justice but instead closing the case. If I have access to your entire phone, I can use anything I find against you as probable cause whether it’s related to the crime or not.
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LadyCailin ◴[26 Aug 25 23:06 UTC] No.45033422[source]▶
This is why you don’t talk to the police, ESPECIALLY if you’re innocent. Anything you say can and will be used against you. Never to help you. If you’re guilty, and you get found guilty because you accidentally confessed, who cares, you were guilty. If you were innocent, and you accidentally confessed, that is in fact a miscarriage of justice, but the police and courts don’t actually care about justice, if they did, the system would look massively different.
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0xDEAFBEAD ◴[27 Aug 25 01:45 UTC] No.45034547[source]▶
>the police and courts don’t actually care about justice, if they did, the system would look massively different.

Seems overly cynical. How about public defenders, Miranda rights, etc.?

The US court system is set up to be adversarial. The belief is that you get the best overall outcome by having one set of people who try to convict, and another set of people who try to acquit.

One can also make the system look bad from the other direction by arguing that public defenders are terrible, because their job is to help criminals walk free. https://xcancel.com/katanaspeaks/status/1954636840272884111

You're welcome to argue against the overall concept of an adversarial court system. But the system has to be taken in total, rather than selectively focusing on one side.

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1. autoexec ◴[27 Aug 25 10:31 UTC] No.45037724[source]▶
The same public defenders that are unpaid and overworked to the point where they have less than 15 minutes total to work on your case while the prosecution has unlimited funds and resources?

Miranda rights don't work the way most people think they do (https://www.cgmbesq.com/blog/2022/july/the-many-misconceptio...) and courts have gone out of their way to deny people their rights.

The system is corrupt and broken from top to bottom.

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2. 0xDEAFBEAD ◴[27 Aug 25 10:55 UTC] No.45037908[source]▶
>the prosecution has unlimited funds and resources?

Nope. One needs to take the system in total.

"Since New York State’s 2019 discovery reforms were passed, dismissals in cases involving domestic violence rose 26 percent in New York City. In 2023, about 94 percent of cases were dismissed in New York City and nearly 50 percent were dismissed outside of New York City. In many cases, automatic dismissal of cases has put survivors of domestic violence and other crimes at greater risk."

https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-and-state-o...

This increase is a direct result of passing 2019 "discovery reforms" designed to safeguard the rights of the accused. Read the list of examples on the page I linked and tell me that prosecutors in NYC have "unlimited resources".

It's a constant balancing act.

And BTW:

"Public defender jobs in many places are intensely competitive. Many of us went to law school specifically to become public defenders and have zero interest in working for a big firm. I had a merit scholarship to a top 20 law school and only applied to public defender jobs."

https://xcancel.com/kit_sionn_witch/status/17749841523596168...

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3. autoexec ◴[27 Aug 25 11:52 UTC] No.45038377[source]▶
> This increase is a direct result of passing 2019 "discovery reforms" designed to safeguard the rights of the accused. Read the list of examples on the page I linked and tell me that prosecutors in NYC have "unlimited resources".

You'll notice that in all of those cases the prosecution had evidence and they just failed to hand it over or screwed up procedure. They can screw up badly enough that cases get dismissed, but that's not a lack of resources or time.

It's also a very different situation from public defenders who can do everything right but don't have the time or resources to get the job done. To be clear, I don't think that public defenders aren't skilled or qualified or willing to help. They're just very often insanely overworked to the point where they can't possibly put in the time their clients deserve. Even the NACDL admits that this is a problem.

Public defenders can also make a good living, but I think it's clear that private defense attorneys get paid more on average.

A lot of the problems come down to a lack of accountability. Police who commit even the most egregious offenses often don't face meaningful consequences, and the judges, prosecutors, attorneys general have even less accountability.

Even access to our justice system is highly limited for people without a lot of money and outcomes are often determined by who has the most cash to spend.

The results of the whole system speak for themselves. You simply don't get the incarceration rate the US has with a fair and just system.

4. axus ◴[27 Aug 25 13:33 UTC] No.45039463[source]▶
Maybe if they hired more public defenders, applying for the job would be less competitive?