State of Texas v. Granville, Anthony

423 S.W.3d 399, 2014 WL 714730, 2014 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 237
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Texas
DecidedFebruary 26, 2014
DocketPD-1095-12
StatusPublished
Cited by139 cases

This text of 423 S.W.3d 399 (State of Texas v. Granville, Anthony) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State of Texas v. Granville, Anthony, 423 S.W.3d 399, 2014 WL 714730, 2014 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 237 (Tex. 2014).

Opinions

OPINION

COCHRAN, J.,

delivered the opinion of the Court

in which KELLER, P.J., and MEYERS, PRICE, WOMACK, JOHNSON, HERVEY, and ALCALA, JJ„ joined.

This case raises the issue of whether a person retains a legitimate expectation of privacy in the contents of his cell phone when that phone is being temporarily stored in a jail property room.1 The trial judge granted Anthony Granville’s motion to suppress, concluding that the high-school student did not lose his legitimate expectation of privacy in his cell phone simply because it was being stored in the jail property room after he had been arrested for a Class C misdemeanor. The court of appeals affirmed that ruling.2 We granted the SPA’s petition for discretionary review, but we reject its argument that a modern-day cell phone is like a pair of pants or a bag of groceries, for which a person loses all privacy protection once it is checked into a jail property room. We therefore affirm the judgment of the court of appeals.

I.

One morning, Anthony Granville was arrested for the Class C offense of causing a disturbance on the school bus. His cell phone was taken from him during the booking procedure and placed in the jail property room. Later that day, Officer Harrell, a Huntsville Police “School Resources Officer,” was told that, the day before he was arrested, Mr. Granville had used his cell phone to take a photograph of another student urinating in the boys’ bathroom. Officer Harrell, who was not involved in arresting Mr. Granville, then drove to the jail and retrieved the cell phone from the jail property room. He examined its contents without first getting a warrant. The officer turned on the phone, which had been turned off. He went through it until he found the photograph he was looking for, then took the phone to his office, and printed a copy of the photograph. He kept the phone as evidence.

Mr. Granville was charged with the state-jail felony of Improper Photography, and he filed a motion to suppress, arguing that Officer Harrell could not search his cell phone without a warrant. At the hearing on the motion to suppress, both Officer Harrell and the prosecutor contended that if an officer has probable cause, he may search anything in the jail [403]*403property room that belongs to a jail inmate. There are no exceptions. The trial judge tested this hypothesis by asking the prosecutor, “[D]o you agree that there is an expectation of privacy on the information the person has on their cell phone?” The prosecutor responded, “If you have it in your possession and not committed a crime, sure.” She elaborated further:

I think if you’re in the Walker County jail you have no expectation of privacy in the personal effects that you had on you at the time that you were arrested.... His expectation of privacy is diminished in those effects until he can and does exhibit subjective expectations through his conduct, presumably at the time of his release from detainment or incarceration.

Defense counsel disagreed: “[I]t is clear that everybody in this room has some subjective belief that their cell phone is private and it doesn’t matter if it is lawfully seized by the cops.”

The trial judge posed the legal issue nicely:

So if I get arrested for jay walking out here this afternoon and get put in jail, any officer in town can go out there and go through my phone, cell phone, and might discover that I have a picture of Prometheus chained to a rock in the mountains and an eagle eating his liver out?

Yes, said the State; “If an officer has probable cause to believe that you committed a crime or evidence of that crime [is] on your phone, then, yes he can look at it. Otherwise, no he can’t look at your phone because he wants to. He has to have probable cause.”

After studying the law, the trial judge granted the motion to suppress and entered findings of fact, concluding that the cell phone was the personal property of Anthony Granville; Officer Harrell took possession of it without a warrant; and the officer “searched the contents of the cell phone until he found the photograph he sought.”3 Based on his factual findings, the trial judge concluded that Anthony [404]*404Granville had a subjective, reasonable, and legitimate expectation of privacy in his cell phone “even when that cell phone [was] in the jail inventory of an accused.” Because Officer Harrell had neither a search warrant nor exigent circumstances to make a warrantless search of that phone, the trial judge granted the motion to suppress.4

The State appealed, and the court of appeals affirmed, finding that (1) a person “has a general, reasonable expectation of privacy in the data contained in or accessible by his cell, now ‘smart’ phone,”5 and (2) a person continues to have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of his cell phone even though it has been placed in a jail property room for safekeeping.6 The court of appeals ended its opinion with a rhetorical flourish, noting that “[a] cell phone is not a pair of pants,” like the pants and shoes whose warrantless seizure from the jail property room and later search and testing we upheld in Oles v. State.7

II.

Appellate courts afford almost total deference to a trial judge’s findings of fact in a suppression hearing as long as those factual findings are supported by the record.8 We also view his factual findings in the light most favorable to his ruling.9

[405]*405The Fourth Amendment states that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated.”10 The term “papers and effects” obviously carried a different connotation in the late eighteenth century than it does today. No longer are they stored only in desks, cabinets, satchels, and folders. Our most private information is now frequently stored in electronic devices such as computers, laptops, iPads, and cell phones, or in “the cloud” and accessible by those electronic devices.11 But the “central concern underlying the Fourth Amendment” has remained the same throughout the centuries; it is “the concern about giving police officers unbridled discretion to rummage at will among a person’s private effects.”12 This is a case about rummaging through a citizen’s electronic private effects-a cell phone-without a warrant.

A. Standing: A Cell Phone Owner Has Both a Subjective and Reasonable Expectation of Privacy in His Cell Phone.

A person has “standing” to contend that a search or seizure was unreasonable if (1) he has a subjective expectation of privacy in the place or object searched, and (2) society is prepared to recognize that expectation as “reasonable” or “legitimate.”13 The “standing” doctrine ensures that a person may claim only that his own rights have been violated; he cannot assert that he is entitled to benefit because the rights of another have been violated.14 A person’s constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches is a personal right that cannot be asserted vicariously.15

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
423 S.W.3d 399, 2014 WL 714730, 2014 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 237, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-of-texas-v-granville-anthony-texcrimapp-2014.