Select Page

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees that persons shall be free from searches that invade their reasonable expectation of privacy without a warrant issued on the basis of probable cause.  Search incident to an arrest represents one of four primary exceptions to the requirement for search warrants.  In State v. Smith, the Supreme Court of Ohio confronted a modern question about the scope of searches incident to arrest: when police arrest a person with a cell phone, may the arresting officers search the information stored in the phone?  Concluding that a cell phone should not be characterized as a closed container, the Supreme Court of Ohio held that a cell phone’s storage capacity creates and justifies a high expectation of privacy in the cell phone’s stored information and the state may not invade that interest without a warrant. . .