{"id":4592,"date":"2016-09-17T11:59:54","date_gmt":"2016-09-17T15:59:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=4592"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:53:00","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:53:00","slug":"creeping-someone-elses-phone-ever-justified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/creeping-someone-elses-phone-ever-justified\/","title":{"rendered":"Creeping Through Someone Else's Phone: Is It Ever Justified?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this ever-expanding golden age of technology we are becoming more dependent on our cell phones than ever before. A normal person will look at their smart phone around 85 times<\/a><\/span> a day, totaling just shy of one third of her day\u2019s waking hours. Our lives seem tethered to our phones; from checking the stock market, social media and finances to games, texting and even creeping though other phones. In a time where trust is a vanishing commodity and the keys to a person\u2019s kingdom fit on a 4 by 6 inch screen,<\/p>\n

can one really be blamed for \u201ccreeping\u201d through their partner\u2019s phone?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The State of Arizona decidedly says yes, a person\u2019s phone is sacred even from the United States government.<\/a><\/span>
\nWe have known since Riley v California (2014) that a person\u2019s phone contains \u201cthe privacies of life<\/a><\/span>\u201d which the Supreme Court has accorded 4th<\/sup> amendment protection. A more complex question however, is understanding just how far this protection reaches. Arizona\u2019s Supreme Court was tasked with this exact question when they decided whether or not to allow the conviction of Robin Peoples for rape and necrophilia off evidence obtained from a smart phone.
\nEarly September 12th<\/sup> the Court unanimously held that Tucson county police officers could not admit into evidence anything obtained from Peoples\u2019 phone<\/a><\/span>. This story begins much earlier however; Robin Peoples lived in the apartment right next to his girlfriend Gabby\u2019s (real name omitted) who he had been seeing for about 3 months. One night he stayed over at her place and used his cell phone to record the two having intercourse. The next morning Gabby\u2019s daughter found her mother laying unresponsive on the bed and notified the authorities. Peoples hurried from the apartment to lend aid to the arriving paramedics. In doing so however, he forgot his phone back in the apartment.
\nThe cell phone, which was un-password protected, was found and \u201ccreeped\u201d by Tucson police officers shortly after. The first thing which appeared on the screen as the phone was swiped on was \u201ca paused video-image of [Gabby] on her back, mostly naked<\/a><\/span>.\u201d After pressing play the video showed Peoples having sex with a seemingly unresponsive Gabby. In addition to the video, during the course of his apprehension Peoples told the arresting officer that \u201c[Gabby] probably was dead\u201d and that when they had sex he \u201cthought she was breathing.\u201d<\/a>
\nAfter all was said and done the Court ruled that Peoples had a right to a reasonable expectation of privacy as to the contents of his phone not only from the government, but from friends and partners as well. Justice Trimmer\u2014who delivered the opinion for the court\u2014wrote \u201cthat privacy is no less worthy of protection when a cell phone is outside a person\u2019s immediate control<\/a><\/span>.\u201d The evidence of both the video from the phone and the arguable admittance were dropped because no other conclusive evidence exists.
\nBut what about the privacy against my friends? Or what if my significant other goes through my phone? Well according to the Arizona Supreme Court that evidence \u2013while most likely fully relevant in your relationship\u2014will not be admissible in a criminal context and possibly not in a civil context either<\/a><\/span>. The Supreme Court\u2019s decision in Riley\u2014a source heavily cited by justice Trimmer\u2014has reverberated through the halls of criminal courts and has breached into the civil context as well. Obtaining evidence of another\u2019s call and texting records is being stopped in its tracks at discovery on numerous occasions with cites to the Riley case<\/a><\/span>. The evidence may condemn your rapport with the person who has creeped, but it will not be used against you if it was obtained in a way which violates your 4th<\/sup> amendment rights.
\nWe are headed towards an era where \u201ccreeping\u201d on someone\u2019s phone and discovering something terrible may matter for not. If rape and necrophilia are incapable of swaying a judge maybe nothing will. This should not deter us however, from finding a balance between striving for the truth and respecting personal privacy. Yet, within the context of creeping through someone\u2019s phone, the question to ask going forward may be whether we should even look in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this ever-expanding golden age of technology we are becoming more dependent on our cell phones than ever before. A normal person will look at their smart phone around 85 times a day, totaling just shy of one third of her day\u2019s waking hours. Our lives seem tethered to our phones; from checking the stock …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4590,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4592"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4592"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7189,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4592\/revisions\/7189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}