Opinion ID: 1896099
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Belsha's Browsing Through the Image Gallery and Answering the Incoming Call

Text: ¶ 33 Next, two things happened as Belsha continued to possess the phone legally. First, he opened and browsed through the cell phone's image gallery. Second, he answered an incoming call. As an initial matter, the image gallery search clearly seems to be contrary to the holding in Place because there were no exigent circumstances at the time requiring him to review the gallery or other data stored in the phone. That data was not in immediate danger of disappearing before Belsha could obtain a warrant. Moreover, the United States Supreme Court in Place invoked Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U.S. 753, 99 S.Ct. 2586, 61 L.Ed.2d 235 (1979), as support for its rule. Place, 462 U.S. at 701 & n. 3, 103 S.Ct. 2637. In Sanders, officers with probable cause to believe a suitcase contained contraband were justified in seizing that suitcase, but the Fourth Amendment precluded their immediate search of the case without a warrant. 442 U.S. at 761, 766, 99 S.Ct. 2586. Again, we note that the court of appeals assumed that Belsha's browsing through the image gallery on Carroll's phone without a warrant was improper. We need not make the same assumption. Rather, we are satisfied that that search was indeed improper and that the evidence obtained from that search at that time was tainted. In so holding, we are adhering to the holding of the United States Supreme Court in Place, 462 U.S. at 701, 103 S.Ct. 2637, and in Sanders, 442 U.S. at 761, 766, 99 S.Ct. 2586. ¶ 34 However, Belsha's answering the incoming call was justified. We again apply the standard from Place, which requires that the officer had probable cause to believe that the device contains evidence of a crime and that exigent circumstances justify a warrantless search. 462 U.S. at 701, 103 S.Ct. 2637. Here, as explained above, Belsha had probable cause to believe that the cell phone was a tool used in drug trafficking based on the plain view of the marijuana image and his knowledge that such images are typically found on drug traffickers' phones. That evidence shows more than a fair probability that an incoming call to such a phone would contain evidence of illegal drug activity. In short, the probable cause requirement in Place is satisfied here. ¶ 35 Moreover, exigent circumstances permitted Belsha's answering the call. The test for whether exigent circumstances are present focuses on whether the officer reasonably believes that the delay necessary to obtain a warrant, under the circumstances, threatens the destruction of evidence. Faust, 274 Wis.2d 183, ¶ 11, 682 N.W.2d 371. We are not aware of any Wisconsin case that expressly addresses whether an officer's interception of an incoming call on a seized cell phone is an exigent circumstance. However, several federal cases address whether an officer may, based on exigent circumstances, access data or answer incoming calls on an electronic device that the officer had legally seized. [7] Those cases, which we explore in detail herein, provide persuasive guidance. ¶ 36 In the foundational case, United States v. Ortiz , officers seized an electronic pager incident to Ortiz's arrest for distribution of heroin. 84 F.3d at 982. While continuing to search Ortiz and his vehicle for evidence, one of the agents pushed a button on the pager that revealed the numeric codes that the pager previously had received. The district court denied Ortiz's motion to suppress that evidence. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that denial based on the risk that the data would be destroyed or lost if agents were required to first obtain a warrant: Because of the finite nature of a pager's electronic memory, incoming pages may destroy currently stored telephone numbers in a pager's memory. . . . Thus, it is imperative that law enforcement officers have the authority to immediately search or retrieve, incident to a valid arrest, information from a pager in order to prevent its destruction as evidence. Ortiz, 84 F.3d at 984. ¶ 37 In subsequent cases, other courts have adopted that rationale when evaluating an officer's ability to search a seized cell phone incident to arrest, and have permitted law enforcement to conduct a warrantless search of a phone's stored data, such as records of calls received and made, so long as the other requirements of the search incident to arrest exception were satisfied. See, e.g., Finley, 477 F.3d at 259-60 (holding that a search of a cell phone's stored text messages and call records was permissible); Wurie, 612 F.Supp.2d at 110 (holding that a search of a cell phone was permissible); United States v. Deans, 549 F.Supp.2d 1085, 1094 (D.Minn.2008) (holding that officers may search any data contained in a cell phone lawfully seized). ¶ 38 To be sure, cell phones and pagers are not interchangeable. Indeed, the court in United States v. Wall, 2008 WL 5381412,  (S.D.Fla.2008), observed that while exigent circumstances could justify a warrantless search of a cell phone, [t]he differences in technology between pagers and cell phones cut to the heart of this issue [of whether an officer's reading of stored text messages within a cell phone was justified based on exigent circumstances]. The technological developments that have occurred in the last decade, since Ortiz was decided, are significant. Previously, there was legitimate concern that by waiting minutes or even seconds to check the numbers stored inside a pager an officer ran the risk that another page may come in and destroy the oldest number being stored. This was based on a platform of first-in-first-out storage of numbers used for pagers. Text messages on cell phones are not stored in the same manner. . . . [I]f a text message is not deleted by the user, the phone will store it. ¶ 39 In Wall, the court concluded that the government failed to demonstrate an exigency justifying the agent's search of the defendant's text messages. There, the government put forth no evidence of the danger of the text messages being destroyed; to the contrary, it acknowledged that such messages generally remain stored in the phone unless a user actively deletes them. Given that, the court concluded that the officers' review of the text messages was purely investigatory and evidence obtained from that review was therefore tainted. ¶ 40 Significantly, at least one court has concluded that when a government agent lawfully possesses a phone and there is probable cause to believe it is used in illegal drug activity, the agent can answer incoming calls if the calls arrive in a period when it is impracticable for the agent to obtain a warrant first. See United States v. De La Paz, 43 F.Supp.2d 370, 375 (S.D.N.Y.1999). In De La Paz, agents had lawfully seized a cell phone incident to an arrest. While the agents were processing the defendant's arrest, the defendant's phone rang nine times and the agents answered it each time. The defendant unsuccessfully sought to have evidence of those phone calls suppressed. The court concluded that it was reasonable under the circumstances for the agents to answer the cell phone of a suspected drug dealer in the time between the arrest and arraignment, given both the impossibility of timely obtaining a warrant allowing agents to answer incoming calls and the risk of losing evidence by leaving those calls unanswered. As the De La Paz court observed, in those circumstances, the Fourth Amendment does not require . . . agents to ignore potential evidence that might disappear. Id. at 375-76. ¶ 41 The consistent approach taken in these cases is that the courts scrutinized the nature of the evidence obtained, i.e., numeric codes on a pager, stored text messages, and incoming phone calls, and balanced that with an inquiry into whether the agent reasonably believed that the situation required a search to avoid lost evidence. Based on that assessment, it appears that the courts then reserved the exigent circumstances exception for searches directed at the type of evidence that is truly in danger of being lost or destroyed if not immediately seized. That approach is consistent with Wisconsin case law addressing exigent circumstances. See Faust, 274 Wis.2d 183, ¶ 12, 682 N.W.2d 371 (stating that the rule for determining whether exigent circumstances are present requires an inquiry into whether the officer reasonably believed that the delay necessary to obtain a warrant, under the circumstances, threatened the destruction of evidence). ¶ 42 Hence, we are satisfied that exigent circumstances justified Belsha's answering Carroll's cell phone. The fleeting nature of a phone call is apparent; if it is not picked up, the opportunity to gather evidence is likely to be lost, as there is no guaranteeor likelihoodthat the caller would leave a voice mail or otherwise preserve the evidence. Given these narrow circumstances, Belsha had a reasonable belief that he was in danger of losing potential evidence if he ignored the call. Thus, the evidence obtained as a result of answering that phone call was untainted.