Massachusetts Supreme Court Hears Case on Warrantless Cellphone Searches
Law enforcement shouldn't have been able to search or seize Adam Bradley’s telephone records without first obtaining a warrant, Jason Estabrook’s lawyer George Murphy argued Thursday before the Massachusetts Supreme Court. Estabrook was charged with first-degree murder and allegedly was…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
in possession of Bradley’s cellphone before and after the murder. Arguing on behalf of the commonwealth, Jamie Michael Charles said that in order to have a reasonable expectation of privacy, an individual must show interest in the phone. Charles said that since law enforcement knew the time of the murder, it searched a six-hour time frame of Bradley’s phone around the time of the murder, a search that didn't require a warrant. Defendants constantly talk in advance to plan crimes and after to sync alibis and how to get rid of evidence, Charles said. Probable cause wasn't needed because there's no reasonable expectation of privacy in a short-time frame because it doesn’t show patterns such as whether an individual visits a mosque once a week or is cheating on a spouse, Charles said. Murphy said there's no evidence Bradley had his phone on his person. Bradley attorney Daniel Beck said that law enforcement illegally obtained information in order to obtain a statement from his client. The American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation have written amicus briefs on the Estabrook v. Commonwealth case, asking the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to close what they see as a loophole in the state’s warrant requirements for cellphones, which let law enforcement collect cell-site location information for a period of six hours or less without a warrant (see 1504270048).