Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-12-50598/USCOURTS-ca9-12-50598-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Chad Daniel Camou
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

CHAD DANIEL CAMOU,

Defendant-Appellant.

No. 12-50598

D.C. No.

3:11-cr-05027-H-1

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of California

Marilyn L. Huff, District Judge, Presiding

Argued May 7, 2013

Submitted December 3, 2014

Pasadena, California

Filed December 11, 2014

Before: Harry Pregerson and Raymond C. Fisher, Circuit

Judges, and James S. Gwin, District Judge.*

Opinion by Judge Pregerson

* The Honorable James S. Gwin, District Judge for the U.S. District

Court for the Northern District of Ohio, sitting by designation.

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2 UNITED STATES V. CAMOU

SUMMARY**

Criminal Law

The panel reversed the district court’s denial of a criminal

defendant’s motion to suppress images of child pornography

found on his cell phone during a warrantless search.

The panel held that the warrantless search of the cell

phone at a Border Patrol checkpoint’s securityoffices was not

roughly contemporaneous with the defendant’s arrest and,

therefore, not a search incident to arrest, given both the

passage of one hour and twenty minutes between arrest and

search, and the seven intervening acts between arrest and

search that signaled the arrest was over.

The panel held that the search of the cell phone is not

excused under the exigency exception to the warrant

requirement because the government failed to show exigent

circumstances that required immediate police action, and

even if the exigencies permitted a search of the phone to

prevent the loss of call data, the search’s scope was

impermissibly overbroad.

The panel held that cell phones are not containers for

purposes of the vehicle exception to the warrant requirement,

and that the search of the defendant’s cell phone therefore

cannot be justified under that exception. 

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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UNITED STATES V. CAMOU 3

The panel concluded that neither the inevitable-discovery

exception to the exclusionary rule, nor the good-faith

exception, applies.

COUNSEL

James Fife, Deputy Federal Public Defenders, San Diego,

California, for Defendant-Appellant

Alessandra P. Serano, Assistant United States Attorney, San

Diego, California, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

OPINION

PREGERSON, Circuit Judge:

Chad Camou appeals the district court’s denial of his

motion to suppress images of child pornography found on his

cell phone during a warrantless search. We have jurisdiction

pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We reverse.

FACTUAL & PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

I. Camou’s Arrest and the Seizure of Camou’s Cell

Phone at 10:40 p.m.

On August 1, 2009, United States Border Patrol agents

stopped a truck belonging to Chad Camou at a primary

inspection checkpoint on Highway 86 in Westmorland,

California. Camou was driving the truck, while his girlfriend,

Ashley Lundy, sat in the passenger seat. Agents at the

checkpoint grew suspicious when Lundy did not make eye

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4 UNITED STATES V. CAMOU

contact, so they asked Camou if they could open the door to

the truck. Once they opened the door, the agents saw

Alejandro Martinez-Ramirez (Martinez-Ramirez), an

undocumented immigrant, lying on the floor behind the

truck’s front seats. Consequently, at about 10:40 p.m., agents

arrested and handcuffed Camou, Lundy, and MartinezRamirez. At the same time, agents also seized Camou’s truck

and a cell phone found in the cab of the truck. Agents then

moved Camou, Lundy, and Martinez-Ramirez into the

checkpoint’s security offices for booking.

II. Agents Processed, Booked, and Interviewed Camou at

the Security Offices

Once at the checkpoint’s security offices, Border Patrol

agents processed and booked Camou and Lundy. At some

point during the booking process, Border Patrol Agent

Andrew Baldwin inventoried Camou’s cell phone as “seized

property and evidence.”

Agents then began to interview Camou and Lundy. 

Lundy was given Miranda warnings. It is unclear whether

Camou was given Miranda warnings or whether he said

anything to the agents at this point. Neither Camou nor

Lundy asked for an attorney.

During Lundy’s initial interview with Border Patrol

Agent Richard Walla, Lundy waived her Miranda rights and

explained that, before she and Camou picked up MartinezRamirez, Camou had received a phone call from Jessie, a.k.a.

“Mother Teresa.” “Mother Teresa” arranged for Camou to

pick up Martinez-Ramirez in Calexico, California and

transport him to either Palm Desert, California or Coachella,

California. During Lundy’s interview, Camou’s cell phone

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UNITED STATES V. CAMOU 5

rang several times. The caller identification screen on the

phone displayed the phone number that Lundy had identified

as belonging to “Mother Teresa.” Agents asked Camou if the

cell phone belonged to him. Camou replied, “Yes.”

Border Patrol Agents Jason Masney and Ciudad Real

attempted to furtherinterviewMartinez-Ramirez, Camou, and

Lundy. Martinez-Ramirez told the agents that he had been in

the car for about forty minutes and that Camou had planned

to take him to Los Angeles. Camou invoked his right to

remain silent. Lundy, meanwhile, agreed to answer more

questions. She told the agents that she and Camou had been

smuggling undocumented immigrants about eight times per

month for about nine months. She explained that Camou

would receive phone calls from smugglers on his cell phone

both before and after passing the Highway 86 checkpoint.

III. Warrantless Search of Camou’s Cell Phone at

12:00 a.m.

At 12:00 a.m., one hour and twenty minutes after

Camou’s arrest, Agent Walla searched Camou’s cell phone. 

In his subsequent report, Agent Walla claimed he was looking

for evidence of “known smuggling organizations and

information related to the case.” Agent Walla did not assert

that the search was necessary to prevent the destruction of

evidence or to ensure his or anyone else’s safety.

Agent Walla searched the call logs of the cell phone and

discovered several recent calls from “Mother Teresa.” Agent

Walla closed the call logs screen and opened the videos

stored on the phone’s internal memory. He saw several

videos that appeared to be taken near the Calexico, California

Port of Entry. He then closed the videos and opened the

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photographs, which were also stored on the phone’s internal

memory. He “scrolled quickly through about 170 of the

images before stopping. Of the images he viewed, about 30

to 40 were child pornography. Walla was disturbed by the

images and stopped reviewing the contents of the phone.”

After stopping the search, Agent Walla called U.S.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Imperial County

Sheriff’s Office, and the FBI to pursue child pornography

charges against Camou. Assistant United States Attorney

John Weis at the El Centro Sector Prosecutions Office did not

pursue alien smuggling charges against Camou because Weis

decided that the smuggling case against Camou “did not meet

prosecution guidelines.” Weis informed Border Patrol agents

of his decision the same day Camou’s cell phone was

searched by Agent Walla.

Several days later, on August 5, 2009, the FBI executed

a federal warrant to search Camou’s cell phone for child

pornography. Pursuant to the warrant, the FBI found several

hundred images of child pornography on the cell phone.

IV. District Court Proceedings

A grand jury indicted Camou for possession of child

pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(4)(B). 

Camou moved the district court to suppress the child

pornography images found on his cell phone, arguing that the

warrantless search of his cell phone at the checkpoint’s

security offices violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The

district court denied Camou’s motion. The district court

found that the search of the phone was a lawful search

incident to arrest and, even if the search was unconstitutional,

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UNITED STATES V. CAMOU 7

the good faith and inevitable discovery exceptions to the

exclusionary rule were satisfied.

Camou entered a conditional guilty plea to possession of

child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(4)(B). 

Camou was sentenced to thirty-seven months in prison

followed by five years of supervised release. Camou is

currently serving his prison sentence. Camou appeals the

district court’s denial of his motion to suppress.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

We review de novo the district court’s denial of a motion

to suppress. United States v. Song Ja Cha, 597 F.3d 995, 999

(9th Cir. 2010). We review the district court’s underlying

factual findings for clear error. Id. We review de novo the

application of the good faith and inevitable discovery

exceptions to the exclusionary rule. United States v. Krupa,

658 F.3d 1174, 1179 (9th Cir. 2011).

DISCUSSION

Camou argues that the warrantless search of his cell

phone was unconstitutional because the search was not

incident to arrest, and no other exceptions to the warrant

requirement apply. Camou also argues that the exclusionary

rule bars the admissibility of the images found on his phone. 

We agree.

I. Search Incident to Arrest

A search incident to a lawful arrest is an exception to the

general rule that warrantless searches violate the Fourth

Amendment. The exception allows a police officer making

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a lawful arrest to conduct a search of the area within the

arrestee’s “immediate control,” that is, “the area from within

which [an arrestee] might gain possession of a weapon or

destructible evidence.” Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752,

763 (1969) (internal quotation marks omitted), abrogated on

other grounds by Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332, 344 (2009).

The first requirement of a search incident to arrest is that

the search be limited to the arrestee’s person or areas in the

arrestee’s “immediate control” at the time of arrest. Gant,

556 U.S. at 339; Chimel, 395 U.S. at 763; United States v.

Turner, 926 F.2d 883, 887 (9th Cir. 1991). The “immediate

control” requirement ensures that a search incident to arrest

will not exceed the rule’s two original purposes of protecting

arresting officers and preventing the arrestee from destroying

evidence: “If there is no possibility that an arrestee could

reach into the area that law enforcement officers seek to

search, both justifications for the search-incident-to-arrest

exception are absent and the rule does not apply.” Gant,

556 U.S. at 339.1

The second requirement of a search incident to arrest is

that the search be spatially and temporally incident to the

arrest. See United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 15 (1977),

abrogated on other grounds by California v. Acevedo,

1 One exception to the immediate control requirement, however, occurs

in the vehicle context. Where the search incident to arrest is of a vehicle,

the Supreme Court has held: “Although it does not follow from Chimel,

we also conclude that circumstances unique to the vehicle context justify

a search incident to lawful arrest when it is ‘reasonable to believe

evidence relevant to the crime of the arrest might be found in the

vehicle.’” Gant, 556 U.S. at 343 (emphasis added) (quoting Thornton v.

United States, 541 U.S. 615, 632 (2004) (Scalia, J., concurring in

judgment)).

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UNITED STATES V. CAMOU 9

500 U.S. 565, 580 (1991); United States v. Hudson, 100 F.3d

1409, 1419 (9th Cir. 1996). The Supreme Court has held that

“warrantless searches of luggage or other property seized at

the time of an arrest cannot be justified as incident to that

arrest . . . if the search is remote in time or place from the

arrest . . . .” Chadwick, 433 U.S. at 15 (emphasis added). 

We have interpreted the temporal requirement to mean that

the search must be “roughly contemporaneous with the

arrest.” United States v. Smith, 389 F.3d 944, 951 (9th Cir.

2004) (per curiam).

We have summed up the two general requirements of a

valid search incident to arrest as follows: “The determination

of the validity of a search incident to arrest in this circuit is a

two-fold inquiry: (1) was the searched item ‘within the

arrestee’s immediate control when he was arrested’; (2) did

‘events occurring after the arrest but before the search ma[k]e

the search unreasonable’?” United States v. Maddox,

614 F.3d 1046, 1048 (9th Cir. 2010) (quoting United States

v. Turner, 926 F.2d 883, 887 (9th Cir. 1992)).

We need not decide whether the government meets the

first requirement of search incident to arrest because the

government cannot show that the second requirement—that

the search be spatially and temporally incident to the

arrest—is met.

Agent Walla’s search of Camou’s cell phone was too far

removed in time from Camou’s arrest to be incident to that

arrest. As stated above, we have interpreted the temporal

requirement to mean that the search must be “roughly

contemporaneous with the arrest.” Smith, 389 F.3d at 951. 

To determine whether this contemporaneity requirement is

met, we have stated that the focus is “upon whether the arrest

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and search are so separated in time or by intervening acts that

the latter cannot be said to have been incident to the former.” 

Id. In some cases, we have “relied on the number of minutes

that passed between the arrest and the search. . . . In other

cases, we have relied on a more impressionistic sense of the

flow of events that begins with the arrest and ends with the

search.” United States v. Caseres, 533 F.3d 1064, 1073 (9th

Cir. 2008).

In Caseres, we found that a search of the arresteedefendant’s car was not incident to arrest for two independent

reasons: (1) the “arrest was not spatially related to the

vehicle” because Caseres, the arrestee, was a block and a half

away from his car at the time of his arrest; and (2) “the search

. . . was too far removed in time from the arrest to be

considered as truly incidental to [the] arrest.” Id. at 1072,

1074. We noted that, while it was unclear from the record

how much time passed between arrest and search, the district

court reasonably found the search was conducted “well after”

the arrest. Id. at 1074. In holding that the search was too

temporally removed from the arrest, we reasoned that the

“arrest and the search were separated not only by substantial

time, but also by a string of intervening events that signaled

that the exigencies of the situation had dissipated.” Id. The

intervening events we noted were: police questioning of

Caseres, conversations between police, and police moving

back and forth between the site of the arrest and Caseres’s

car. Id.

In Maddox, we similarly held that the warrantless search

of an arrestee-defendant’s car was not incident to arrest, but

in so holding we relied solely on intervening events between

the arrest and search. 614 F.3d at 1048. In Maddox, after

Maddox ignored the officer’s request to exit his car following

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UNITED STATES V. CAMOU 11

a stop for reckless driving, the officer seized Maddox’s key

chain and cell phone and threw them on the front seat. Id. at

1047. The officer arrested and handcuffed Maddox and

placed him in the back of the patrol car. Id. He then returned

to Maddox’s car, reached inside, and grabbed the key chain

and cell phone. Id. The key chain included a metal vial with

a screw top. Id. The officer unscrewed the metal vial’s top

and discovered methamphetamine inside. Id. We held that

the intervening event of Maddox being handcuffed and placed

in the back of a patrol car rendered the search unreasonable. 

Id. at 1048–49; see also United States v. Vasey, 834 F.2d 782,

787–88 (9th Cir. 1987) (holding that the warrantless search of

Vasey’s car was not incident to arrest where the search

occurred thirty to forty-five minutes after Vaseywas arrested;

Vaseywas handcuffed and placed in the back of the patrol car

before the search; and officers “conducted several

conversations with Vasey” between arrest and search); United

States v. Monclavo-Cruz, 662 F.2d 1285, 1288 (9th Cir. 1981)

(holding that the warrantless search of an arrestee’s purse at

the station house, about an hour after she was arrested next to

her car, was not sufficiently contemporaneous with the arrest

to be incident to arrest).2

Here, Agent Walla’s search of Camou’s cell phone was

not roughly contemporaneous with Camou’s arrest and,

2 We briefly note that, by citing to United States v. Johns, 469 U.S. 478

(1985), the government incorrectly conflates two different search and

seizure doctrines: search incident to arrest and the vehicle exception to

the warrant requirement. As Johns did not concern a search incident to

arrest, Johns’s holding allowing a three-day delay in searching seized

items does not help the government’s search incident to arrest argument. 

We revisit the government’s Johns argument in the next section when

analyzing whether the vehicle exception to the warrant requirement

applies.

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therefore, was not incident to arrest. First, one hour and

twenty minutes passed between Camou’s arrest and Agent

Walla’s search of the cell phone. This delay is longer than

the thirty to forty-five minutes in Vasey and the one hour in

Monclavo-Cruz; and the searches in those two cases were

deemed not sufficiently contemporaneous with arrest.

Second, a string of intervening acts occurred between

Camou’s arrest and the search of his cell phone that make the

one hour and twenty minute delay even more unreasonable:

(1) Camou and Lundy were restrained with handcuffs; (2)

Camou and Lundy were moved from the checkpoint area to

the security offices; (3) Camou and Lundy were processed;

(4) agents moved Camou’s cell phone from the vehicle into

the security offices, inventoried the phone as a seized item,

and moved the phone into the interview rooms; (5) Camou

and Lundy were interviewed as part of the booking process;

(6) Martinez-Ramirez was interviewed; and (7) Agents

Masney and Real interviewed Lundy for a second time and

tried to interview Camou, who invoked his right to remain

silent. These intervening acts include the same sort of

intervening acts in Caseres—police questioning the arrestee,

conversations between police, and police moving between the

site of the arrest and the site of search—as well as the

intervening acts of Maddox and Vasey—police handcuffing

the arrestee and placing him under police control. And here

we also have the additional intervening acts of police booking

the arrestee, police questioning the material witness,

Martinez-Ramirez, and police moving the item to be

searched––i.e., Camou’s cell phone––from the site of the

arrest to the security offices.

Given both the passage of one hour and twenty minutes

between arrest and search and the seven intervening acts

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between arrest and search that signaled the arrest was over,

we conclude that the search of the phone was not roughly

contemporaneous with arrest and, therefore, was not a search

incident to arrest.

II. Two Other Exceptions to the Warrant Requirement: 

the Exigency Exception & the Vehicle Exception

Several of the government’s arguments more properlyfall

under the exigency and vehicle exceptions. For the reasons

explained below, we conclude that neither of these exceptions

is met.

A. The Exigency Exception

Under the exigency exception, officers may make a

warrantless search if: (1) they have probable cause to believe

that the item or place to be searched contains evidence of a

crime, and (2) they are facing exigent circumstances that

require immediate police action. See Warden, Md.

Penitentiary v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, 298–301 (1967)

(upholding a warrantless search where “the exigencies of the

situation made that course imperative”). We have defined

exigent circumstances as “those circumstances that would

cause a reasonable person to believe that entry [or search] . . .

was necessary to prevent physical harm to the officers or

other persons, the destruction ofrelevant evidence, the escape

of the suspect, or some other consequence improperly

frustrating legitimate law enforcement efforts.” United States

v. McConney, 728 F.2d 1195, 1199 (9th Cir. 1984) (en banc),

overruled on other grounds by Estate of Merchant v.

Comm’r, 947 F.2d 1390, 1392–93 (9th Cir. 1991). To be

reasonable, a search under this exception must be limited in

scope so that it is “strictly circumscribed by the exigencies

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which justify its initiation.” Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385,

393 (1978) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also

United States v. Reyes-Bosque, 596 F.3d 1017, 1029 (9th Cir.

2010) (“In order to prove that the exigent circumstances

doctrine justified a warrantless search, the government must

[also] show that . . . the search’s scope and manner were

reasonable to meet the need.”).

After we submitted this case, the Supreme Court granted

the petition for writ of certiorari in Riley v. California, 134 S.

Ct. 999 (2014), on January 17, 2014, to answer the following

question: “Whether evidence admitted at petitioner’s trial was

obtained in a search of petitioner’s cell phone that violated

petitioner’s Fourth Amendment rights.” We then vacated

submission of this case pending the Supreme Court’s decision

in Riley. On June 25, 2014, the Supreme Court issued its

unanimous decision in Riley v. California, 134 S. Ct. 2473

(2014), holding that “a warrant is generally required before

. . . a search [of a cell phone], even when a cell phone is

seized incident to arrest.” Id. at 2493. The Court went on,

however, to note that “other case-specific exceptions maystill

justify a warrantless search of a particular phone.” Id. at

2494. Specifically, the exigencyexception “could include the

need to prevent the imminent destruction of evidence in

individual cases, to pursue a fleeing suspect, and to assist

persons who are seriously injured or are threatened with

imminent injury.” Id.

Even if there was probable cause to search Camou’s cell

phone, we conclude that the government failed to meet the

second prong of the exigency exception: exigent

circumstances that require immediate police action.

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The government argues that “the volatile nature of call

logs and other cell phone information with the passing of

time” presented an exigent circumstance. Riley forecloses

this argument. There, the Court determined that “once law

enforcement officers have secured a cell phone, there is no

longer any risk that the arrestee himself will be able to delete

incriminating data from the phone.” Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2486. 

And although “information on a cell phone may nevertheless

be vulnerable to . . . remote wiping,” there is “little reason to

believe that [this] problem is prevalent.” Id. And, “as to

remote wiping, law enforcement is not without specific

means to address the threat. Remote wiping can be fully

prevented by disconnecting the phone from the network.” Id.

at 2487. When “the police are truly confronted with a ‘now

or never’ situation—for example, circumstances suggesting

that a defendant’s phone will be the target of an imminent

remote-wipe attempt—they may be able to rely on exigent

circumstances to search the phone immediately.” Id (internal

quotation marks omitted). Here, the search of Camou’s cell

phone occurred one hour and twenty minutes after his arrest. 

This was not an “imminent” “now or never situation” such

that the exigency exception would apply. Moreover, the

record does not indicate that Agent Walla believed the call

logs on Camou’s cell phone were volatile and that a search of

Camou’s phone was necessary to prevent the loss of recent

call data.

And even if we were to assume that the exigencies of the

situation permitted a search of Camou’s cell phone to prevent

the loss of call data, the search’s scope was impermissibly

overbroad. The search in this case went beyond contacts and

call logs to include a search of hundreds of photographs and

videos stored on the phone’s internal memory. Thus, Agent

Walla exceeded the scope of any possible exigency by

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extending the search beyond the call logs to examine the

phone’s photographs and videos. See State v. Carroll,

778 N.W.2d 1, 12 (Wis. 2010) (holding that the exigency

exception justified the answering of an incoming call on the

defendant’s cell phone but did not justify a search of images

stored on the phone “because there were no exigent

circumstances at the time requiring [the officer] to review the

gallery or other data stored on the phone. That data was not

in immediate danger of disappearing before [the officer]

could obtain a warrant.”). We therefore conclude that the

search of Camou’s cell phone is not excused under the

exigency exception to the warrant requirement.

B. The Vehicle Exception

Another exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant

requirement is the vehicle exception. Carroll v. United

States, 267 U.S. 132, 153–54 (1925). Under the vehicle

exception, officers may search a vehicle and any containers

found therein without a warrant, so long as they have

probable cause. California v. Acevedo, 500 U.S. 565, 580

(1991); United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 821–22, 825

(1982). Unlike search incident to arrest, the vehicle

exception is not rooted in arrest and the Chimel rationales of

preventing arrestees from harming officers and destroying

evidence. Instead, the vehicle exception is motivated by the

supposedly lower expectation of privacy individuals have in

their vehicles as well as the mobility of vehicles, which

allows evidence contained within those vehicles to be easily

concealed from the police. Carroll, 267 U.S. at 153;

California v. Carney, 471 U.S. 386, 390–91 (1985).

As the Supreme Court noted in Arizona v. Gant, the

permissible scope of a vehicle exception search is “broader”

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than that of a search incident to arrest: “If there is probable

cause to believe a vehicle contains evidence of criminal

activity, [Ross] authorizes a search of any area of the vehicle

in which the evidence might be found. . . . Ross allows

searches for evidence relevant to offenses other than the

offense of arrest.” 556 U.S. 332, 347 (2009) (citing Ross,

456 U.S. at 820–21). Moreover, unlike searches incident to

arrest, searches of vehicles and containers pursuant to the

vehicle exception need not be conducted right away. United

States v. Johns, 469 U.S. 478, 487–88 (1985). So long as the

officers had probable cause to believe the car had evidence of

criminal activity when they seized a container from inside the

car, they may delay searching it. Id. Delays, however, must

be “reasonable in light of all the circumstances.” United

States v. Albers, 136 F.3d 670, 674 (9th Cir. 1998) (upholding

as reasonable a seven- to ten-day delay in viewing videotapes

and film seized from a houseboat).

We assume that the agents had probable cause to believe

Camou’s truck contained evidence of criminal activity once

they saw Martinez-Ramirez lying down behind the seats of

the truck. If the vehicle exception applied in this case,

pursuant to Johns and Albers, the one hour and twentyminute

delay between the seizure of Camou’s cell phone and the

search of its contents would not invalidate the search. We

hold, however, that cell phones are not containers for

purposes of the vehicle exception.

In New York v. Belton, the Supreme Court defined

“container” as “any object capable of holding another object”

and explained that in the vehicle context, containers

“include[] closed or open glove compartments, consoles, or

other receptacles located anywhere within the passenger

compartment, as well as luggage, boxes, bags, clothing, and

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the like.” 453 U.S. 454, 460 n.4 (1981), overruled on other

grounds by Gant, 556 U.S. at 350–51. In United States v.

Ross, the Supreme Court provided “paper bags, locked

trunks, lunch buckets, and orange crates” as examples of

containers. 456 U.S. 798, 821–22 (1982).

Then, in Riley, the Supreme Court examined the

definition of “container” as it would apply to cell phones and

the search incident to arrest exception. The Court found:

Treating a cell phone as a container whose

contents may be searched incident to an arrest

is a bit strained as an initial matter. But the

analogy crumbles entirely when a cell phone

is used to access data located elsewhere, at the

tap of a screen.

134 S. Ct. 2473, 2491 (2014) (citation omitted).

The Court then addressed the government’s proposal that

cell phone searches incident to arrest be analyzed under the

Gant standard imported from the vehicle context:

[A] Gant standard would prove no practical

limit at all when it comes to cell phone

searches. In the vehicle context, Gant

generally protects against searches for

evidence of past crimes. In the cell phone

context, however, it is reasonable to expect

that incriminating information will be found

on a phone regardless of when the crime

occurred. . . . The sources of potential

pertinent information are virtually unlimited,

so applying the Gant standard to cell phones

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UNITED STATES V. CAMOU 19

would in effect give police officers unbridled

discretion to rummage at will among a

person’s private effects.

Id. at 2492 (internal quotation marks omitted).

Given the Court’s extensive analysis of cell phones as

“containers” and cell phone searches in the vehicle context,

we find no reason not to extend the reasoning in Riley from

the search incident to arrest exception to the vehicle

exception. Just as “[c]ell phones differ in both a quantitative

and a qualitative sense from other objects that might be kept

on an arrestee’s person,” so too do cell phones differ from

any other object officers might find in a vehicle. Id. at 2489. 

Today’s cell phones are unlike any of the container examples

the Supreme Court has provided in the vehicle context. 

Whereas luggage, boxes, bags, clothing, lunch buckets,

orange crates, wrapped packages, glove compartments, and

locked trunks are capable of physically “holding another

object,” see Belton, 453 U.S. at 460 n.4, “[m]odern cell

phones, as a category, implicate privacy concerns far beyond

those implicated by the search of a cigarette pack, a wallet, or

a purse,” Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2488–89. In fact, “a cell phone

search would typically expose to the government far more

than the most exhaustive search of a house.” Id. at 2491

(emphasis in original).

We further note that the privacy intrusion of searching a

cell phone without a warrant is of particular concern in the

vehicle exception context because the allowable scope of the

search is broader than that of an exigency search, or a search

incident to arrest. Whereas exigency searches are

circumscribed by the specific exigency at hand and searches

incident to arrest are limited to areas within the arrestee’s

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20 UNITED STATES V. CAMOU

immediate control or to evidence relevant to the crime of

arrest, vehicle exception searches allow for evidence relevant

to criminal activity broadly. If cell phones are considered

containers for purposes of the vehicle exception, officers

would often be able to sift through all of the data on cell

phones found in vehicles because they would not be

restrained by any limitations of exigency or relevance to a

specific crime.

We therefore conclude that cell phones are non-containers

for purposes of the vehicle exception to the warrant

requirement, and the search of Camou’s cell phone cannot be

justified under that exception.

III. Inevitable Discovery and the Good Faith

Exceptions to the Exclusionary Rule

The government argues that, even if the warrantless

search of Camou’s cell phone was unconstitutional, the

photographs found as a result of the search should not be

suppressed because the inevitable discovery and good faith

exceptions to the exclusionary rule are met. We disagree

with the government and find that neither exception is met.

A. Inevitable Discovery

The exclusionary rule allows courts to suppress evidence

obtained as a result of an unconstitutional search or seizure. 

Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 655 (1961); Weeks v. United

States, 232 U.S. 383, 393 (1914). But if the government can

establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the

unlawfully obtained information “ultimately or inevitably

would have been discovered by lawful means,” the

exclusionary rule will not apply. Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S.

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UNITED STATES V. CAMOU 21

431, 444 (1984). We have “never applied the inevitable

discovery exception so as to excuse the failure to obtain a

search warrant where the police had probable cause but

simply did not attempt to obtain a warrant.” United States v.

Young, 573 F.3d 711, 723 (9th Cir. 2009) (quoting United

States v. Mejia, 69 F.3d 309, 320 (9th Cir. 1995)). As we

reasoned in Mejia, “[i]f evidence were admitted

notwithstanding the officers’ unexcused failure to obtain a

warrant, simply because probable cause existed, then there

would never be any reason for officers to seek a warrant.” 

69 F.3d at 320.

Here, the government argues that a warrant to search

Camou’s cell phone for evidence of smuggling activity

inevitably would have been sought and approved, and

therefore that the inevitable discovery doctrine applies. This

argument fails for two independent reasons.

First, the government has not proved by a preponderance

of the evidence that it would have applied for a warrant to

search Camou’s phone for evidence of alien smuggling

activity. In fact, the record points to the opposite conclusion: 

that no search warrant would have been sought and thus that

no search warrant would have been approved. Camou was

ultimately charged only with possession of child

pornography, not with alien smuggling. Border Patrol agents

knew the day Agent Walla searched Camou’s cell phone that

Camou would not be charged with alien smuggling. The

Sector Prosecutions Office informed the agents that day that

“prosecution was declined” in the smuggling case against

Camou because the case “did not meet prosecution

guidelines.” Because the reasonable conclusion from the

record is that no search warrant would have been sought, the

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inevitable discovery exception to the exclusionary rule is not

satisfied.

Second, and more importantly, Mejia governs this case. 

By asking this court to conclude that the inevitable discovery

exception applies here because a search warrant would have

issued, the government is asking us to “excuse the failure to

obtain a search warrant where the police had probable cause

but simply did not attempt to obtain a warrant.” Mejia,

69 F.3d at 320. Under Mejia, this is impermissible and the

inevitable discovery exception to the exclusionary rule is not

satisfied.

B. Good Faith

When the officer executing an unconstitutional search

acted in “good faith,” or on “objectively reasonable reliance,”

the exclusionary rule does not apply. See United States v.

Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 922 (1984). The burden of

demonstrating good faith rests with the government. United

States v. Kow, 58 F.3d 423, 428 (9th Cir. 1995). The test for

good faith is an objective one: “whether a reasonably well

trained officer would have known that the search was illegal

in light of all the circumstances.” United States v. Herring,

555 U.S. 135, 145 (2009) (internal quotation marks omitted).

In Herring, the Supreme Court applied the good faith

exception to an officer’s arrest and search incident to arrest of

the defendant. The Court held that the officer had reasonably

relied on the county clerk’s assertion that the defendant had

an active arrest warrant. Id. at 149–50. The clerk based her

assertion on another law enforcement employee’s negligent

bookkeeping entry, which falsely indicated that the defendant

had an active arrest warrant. Id. In holding that the good

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faith exception applied, the Court reasoned that “the error was

the result of isolated negligence attenuated from the arrest”

and that “an error that arises from nonrecurring and

attenuated negligence is . . . far removed from the core

concerns that led us to adopt the rule in the first place.” Id. at

138, 144. The Court further stated that “[t]o trigger the

exclusionary rule, police conduct must be sufficiently

deliberate that exclusion can meaningfully deter it, and

sufficiently culpable that such deterrence is worth the price

paid by the justice system.” Id. at 144.

We conclude the good faith exception does not apply

here. The governing law at the time of the search made clear

that a search incident to arrest had to be contemporaneous

with the arrest. See, e.g., United States v. Hudson, 100 F.3d

1409, 1419 (9th Cir. 1996). The government has not met its

burden to prove that a reasonably well-trained officer in

Agent Walla’s position could have believed that the search of

Camou’s cell phone one hour and 20 minutes after Camou’s

arrest was lawful. The government does not advance any

arguments except that in searching the phone Agent Walla

was not acting “through ‘reckless or deliberate’ officer

misconduct,” and that Herring controls.

But Herring is distinguishable. Herring dealt with an

officer’s reliance on a county clerk’s assertion that the

defendant had an outstanding warrant, which was in turn

based on another law enforcement employee’s negligence. 

The officer was not negligent himself; the negligence was

two degrees removed from the officer and thus amounted to

“isolated negligence attenuated from the arrest.” 555 U.S. at

137. In Herring, as in its prior good faith jurisprudence, the

Supreme Court found the good faith exception was met

because the officer reasonably relied on an external source,

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which turned out to be erroneous. Id.; see also Arizona v.

Evans, 514 U.S. 1, 14 (1995) (holding that good faith

exception was met where police reasonably relied on

erroneous information concerning an arrest warrant in a

database maintained by judicial employees); Illinois v. Krull,

480 U.S. 340, 358–60 (1987) (extending good faith exception

to searches conducted in reasonable reliance on subsequently

invalidated statutes); Leon, 468 U.S. at 922 (holding that the

officer’s reasonable reliance on a warrant later held to be

invalid met the good faith exception).

The Supreme Court has never applied the good faith

exception to excuse an officer who was negligent himself,

and whose negligence directly led to the violation of the

defendant’s constitutional rights.3 Here, the government fails

to assert that Agent Walla relied on anyone or anything in

conducting his search of Camou’s cell phone, let alone that

any reliance was reasonable. The government instead only

asserts that by searching the phone, Agent Walla was not

acting “recklessly[,] or deliberately” misbehaving. In this

case, the good faith exception cannot apply.

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, we REVERSE the district

court’s denial of Camou’s motion to suppress.

3

In fact, because “objectively reasonable” and “negligent” are mutually

exclusive, the only way to reconcile the “objectively reasonable reliance”

rule established in Leon with Herring is to conclude that the officer who

executed the unconstitutional search or seizure cannot have been the

negligent actor. Herring should be read as holding instead that when an

officer reasonably relies on incorrect information that was the result of

another individual’s “isolated” and “attenuated” negligence, the good faith

exception applies.

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