United States v. Henry Wood

16 F.4th 529
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedOctober 21, 2021
Docket20-2974
StatusPublished
Cited by13 cases

This text of 16 F.4th 529 (United States v. Henry Wood) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Henry Wood, 16 F.4th 529 (7th Cir. 2021).

Opinion

In the

United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 20‐2974 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff‐Appellee, v.

HENRY E. WOOD, Defendant‐Appellant. ____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, South Bend Division. No. 3:19‐cr‐00038 — Damon R. Leichty, Judge. ____________________

ARGUED SEPTEMBER 14, 2021 — DECIDED OCTOBER 21, 2021 ____________________

Before SYKES, Chief Judge, and EASTERBROOK and BRENNAN, Circuit Judges. BRENNAN, Circuit Judge. Henry Wood was arrested for vi‐ olating his parole. Midway through the arrest, parole agents found methamphetamine hidden underneath the back cover of his cellphone. An investigator later extracted the data from his cellphone, revealing child pornography. Wood moved to suppress the data, arguing the Fourth Amendment requires a 2 No. 20‐2974

warrant before such a search. We disagree and affirm the dis‐ trict court’s denial of Wood’s motion to suppress. I Henry Wood served time in Indiana state prison for meth‐ amphetamine‐related offenses. In 2018, he was released on parole under enumerated conditions. Any violation subjected him to “being taken into immediate custody.” Wood’s parole release agreement required him to “report to [his] assigned supervising officer” as instructed. Wood also affirmed the following: I understand that I am legally in the custody of the Department of Correction and that my per‐ son and residence or property under my control may be subject to reasonable search by my su‐ pervising officer or authorized official of the De‐ partment of Correction if the officer or official has reasonable cause to believe that the parolee is violating or is in imminent danger of violating a condition to remaining on parole. About three months after being released, Wood violated his parole by failing to report to his supervising officer. The Indiana Parole Board issued an arrest warrant, and parole agents arrested Wood at his home in North Judson. One of the agents, Agent Gentry, secured Wood with wrist restraints and conducted a frisk search. During the frisk, Gentry noticed Wood repeatedly turning toward his cellphone, which was lying on a “junk pile.” Gentry picked up the cellphone and handed it to Agent Rains. This upset Wood. He demanded that his cellphone be turned off and he began to physically resist Gentry. With the help of another agent, Gentry No. 20‐2974 3

restrained Wood against a nearby wall, and Wood “calmed down immediately.” Meanwhile, Rains felt something “lumpy” on the back of Wood’s cellphone, so he removed the back cover and found a packet of a substance which Rains believed to be metham‐ phetamine. Wood eventually admitted the substance was, in fact, methamphetamine. A later search of the home revealed syringes and other drug paraphernalia. Based on these find‐ ings, Wood was arrested for possession of methamphetamine and parole agents seized his cellphone as evidence. Seven days after Wood’s arrest, an investigator for the In‐ diana Department of Correction performed a warrantless search of Wood’s cellphone by extracting its stored data. This search revealed child pornography. The investigator forwarded this information to a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who obtained a search‐and‐seizure warrant for Wood’s cellphone and its contents. A federal grand jury indicted Wood for both receiving and possessing child pornography, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(2), (a)(4)(B). Before the district court, Wood moved to suppress the data extracted from his cellphone. He argued principally that the state investigator’s warrantless search of his cellphone violated Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373 (2014). The district court disagreed, holding that the search of Wood’s cellphone complied with the Fourth Amendment. United States v. Wood, 426 F. Supp. 3d 560, 575 (N.D. Ind. 2019). Following the denial of his motion to suppress, Wood en‐ tered a conditional guilty plea. See FED. R. CRIM. P. 11(a)(2). He pleaded guilty to the receiving charge in Count 1 of the indict‐ ment—Count 2 was dismissed—and he reserved the right to 4 No. 20‐2974

appeal the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress. This appeal followed. II “When reviewing a district court’s decision denying a mo‐ tion to suppress evidence, we review the court’s legal conclu‐ sions de novo and its factual findings for clear error.” United States v. McGill, 8 F.4th 617, 621 (7th Cir. 2021). The district court rejected Wood’s argument that Riley v. California required law enforcement to obtain a search war‐ rant before searching his cellphone. Instead, the court used the totality of the circumstances approach articulated in United States v. Knights, 534 U.S. 112 (2001), and Samson v. Cal‐ ifornia, 547 U.S. 843 (2006), to conclude that the search of Wood’s cellphone was reasonable under the Fourth Amend‐ ment. We affirm in both respects. A Wood asks us to apply Riley v. California to parolees. The primary problem with this request is that Riley dealt with searches incident to a lawful arrest. The Supreme Court care‐ fully tailored its analysis to that context and expressly recog‐ nized that “other case‐specific exceptions may still justify a warrantless search of a particular phone.” Riley, 573 U.S. at 401–02. Under the Fourth Amendment, “what is reasonable depends on the context within which a search takes place.” New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 337 (1985). Given the context‐specific nature of the Fourth Amend‐ ment, Riley is not readily transferable to scenarios other than the one it addressed. Indeed, we have declined to apply Riley in two other contexts: consent searches and border searches. See United States v. Wanjiku, 919 F.3d 472, 483–85 (7th Cir. No. 20‐2974 5

2019) (border search); United States v. Thurman, 889 F.3d 356, 366 n.9 (7th Cir. 2018) (consent search). To be sure, “the Supreme Court has recently granted heightened protection to cell phone data.” See Wanjiku, 919 F. 3d at 484. But neither our research nor the parties’ briefs re‐ veal any circuit court decision extending a Riley‐like rule to parolees—quite the opposite. See United States v. Pacheco, 884 F.3d 1031, 1043–44 & n.10 (10th Cir. 2018) (discussing Riley’s inapplicability in the parole context); United States v. Johnson, 875 F.3d 1265, 1273–76 (9th Cir. 2017) (holding that Riley did not require parole agents to obtain a warrant before searching a parolee’s cellphone); United States v. Jackson, 866 F.3d 982, 985–86 (8th Cir. 2017) (same). Nevertheless, we take a fresh look. The Supreme Court’s “general Fourth Amendment ap‐ proach” is to “examine the totality of the circumstances to de‐ termine whether a search is reasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.” Samson, 547 U.S. at 848 (cleaned up). Whether a search is reasonable is determined “by assessing, on the one hand, the degree to which it intrudes upon an in‐ dividual’s privacy and, on the other, the degree to which it is needed for the promotion of legitimate governmental inter‐ ests.” Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S. 295, 300 (1999).

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Bluebook (online)
16 F.4th 529, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-henry-wood-ca7-2021.