Court Opinion

ID: 9760102
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 00:40:28.048835+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:07.568371
License: Public Domain

KENNARD, Acting C. J., Concurring.
The majority holds that the police may, without obtaining a warrant, view or listen to information electronically stored on a mobile phone that a suspect was carrying when lawfully arrested. The dissent disagrees. I explain why I join the majority rather than the dissent.
On June 8, 1982, California voters enacted an initiative measure known as Proposition 8. Among other things, Proposition 8 added to the California Constitution a “Right to Truth-in-Evidence” provision (Cal. Const., art. I, § 28, former subd. (d) [now subd. (f)(2)]). That provision generally prohibits exclusion of relevant evidence in a criminal proceeding on the ground that the evidence was obtained unlawfully. Because the federal Constitution is “the supreme law of the land” (U.S. Const., art. VI, § 2), and thus prevails over conflicting state constitutional provisions, the state Constitution’s “Right to Truth-in-Evidence” provision does not apply when relevant evidence must be excluded because it was obtained in violation of the federal Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which prohibits “unreasonable searches and seizures.” As a result, in California criminal proceedings all issues related to the suppression of evidence derived from police searches and seizures are now determined by application of federal constitutional law. (People v. Lenart (2004) 32 Cal.4th 1107, 1118 [12 Cal.Rptr.3d 592, 88 P.3d 498]; People v. Sapp (2003) 31 Cal.4th 240, 267 [2 Cal.Rptr.3d 554, 73 P.3d 433]; People v. Bradford (1997) 15 Cal.4th 1229, 1291 [65 Cal.Rptr.2d 145, 939 P.2d 259].) On issues of federal constitutional law, the decisions of the United States Supreme Court are controlling. (Gates v. Discovery Communications, Inc. (2004) 34 Cal.4th 679, 692 [21 Cal.Rptr.3d 663, 101 P.3d 552].)
As the majority explains, three decisions of the United States Supreme Court compel the result in this case. Those decisions are United States v. Robinson (1973) 414 U.S. 218 [38 L.Ed.2d 427, 94 S.Ct. 467] (Robinson), United States v. Edwards (1974) 415 U.S. 800 [39 L.Ed.2d 771, 94 S.Ct. 1234] (Edwards), and United States v. Chadwick (1977) 433 U.S. 1 [53 L.Ed.2d 538, 97 S.Ct. 2476] (Chadwick). Under Robinson and Chadwick, a warrant is not required for police to conduct a “full search of the person” incident to a lawful arrest (Robinson, at p. 235), and the police may examine an object *103found during the search to determine whether it contains evidence of crime (id. at p. 236), so long as the object is one that is “immediately associated with the person of the arrestee” (Chadwick, at p. 15). Under Edwards, this search and inspection need not occur at the time and place of the arrest; it may occur even after “a substantial period of time has elapsed.” (Edwards, at p. 807.)
When carried in clothing (rather than inside luggage or a similar container), a mobile phone is personal property that is “immediately associated with the person of the arrestee” (Chadwick, supra, 433 U.S. 1, 15). Accordingly, under controlling high court decisions, police may, without obtaining a warrant, inspect a mobile phone carried by a suspect at the time of arrest, by viewing or listening to its electronically stored data, including text messages, even when a substantial time period has elapsed since the arrest.
The dissent asserts that in light of the vast data storage capacity of “smart phones” and similar devices, the privacy interests that the federal Constitution’s Fourth Amendment was intended to protect would be better served by a rule that did not allow police “to rummage at leisure through the wealth of personal and business information that can be carried on a mobile phone or handheld computer merely because the device was taken from an arrestee’s person.” (Dis. opn., post, at p. 111.) The dissent also asserts that the three high court decisions I have mentioned are not binding here because they “were not made with mobile phones, smartphones and handheld computers— none of which existed at the time—in mind.” (Dis. opn., post, at p. 109.) In my view, however, the recent emergence of this new technology does not diminish or reduce in scope the binding force of high court precedents.
I join the majority rather than the dissent because the United States Supreme Court has cautioned that on issues of federal law all courts must follow its directly applicable precedents, even when there are reasons to anticipate that it might reconsider, or create an exception to, a rule of law that it has established. (Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/Am. Exp. (1989) 490 U.S. 477, 484 [104 L.Ed.2d 526, 109 S.Ct. 1917].) The high court has reserved to itself alone “the prerogative of overruling its own decisions.” (Ibid.; see Scheiding v. General Motors Corp. (2000) 22 Cal.4th 471, 478 [93 Cal.Rptr.2d 342, 993 P.2d 996].)
Under the compulsion of directly applicable United States Supreme Court precedent, I join the majority in affirming the Court of Appeal’s judgment.