US Supreme Court

In April of 2011, the United States Supreme Court issued an opinion in Sossamon v. Texas addressing whether the State of Texas had waived its sovereign immunity to private suits for money damages under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA). While the case is primarily constitutional in nature, it did stem from a claim that a Texas inmate made against the State of Texas for allegedly violating his protections of religious exercise.

Specifically, the inmate was challenging two prison policies:

1. a policy preventing inmates from attending religious services while on cell restriction for disciplinary infractions; and
2. a policy barring use of the prison chapel for religious worship.

The court did not address the issue of how and to what extent the prisoner’s rights to religious exercise were violated. Instead, the Court addressed the issue of sovereign immunity and whether the State of Texas could even be sued in the first place.

The Petitioner argued that because the State had received federal funding it had waived it’s right for sovereign immunity and was liable for damages base on RLUIPA.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court concluded that in accepting federal funding, a State does not consent to waive their sovereign immunity to private suits for money damages under RLUIPA. The Court acknowledged that a State may choose to waive its immunity, but that consent must be “unequivocally expressed” in the relevant statute’s text. Clark v. Barnard, 109 U.S. 436. The Court also noted that a waiver “will be strictly construed, in terms of its scope, in favor of the sovereign.” Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Holderman, 465 U.S. 89.

The Court upheld the Fifth Circuits ruling that barred the Petitioner’s claims for monetary relief based on sovereign immunity.

Warrantless Search of Cell Phone | Fort Worth Criminal Defense Attorneys

Can an arresting officer search a person’s text messages as a “search incident to arrest?” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit said YES in U.S. v. Curtis, but caveats that the search in the case occurred prior to the Supreme Court holding in Arizona v. Gant, 129 S.Ct. 1710 (2009).

United States v. Curtis - In July 2007, officers obtained an arrest warrant for Appellant after he made a false statement on a credit application he submitted to a car dealership. (Seriously?) When the officers arrested Appellant he was driving his vehicle and talking on his cell phone. After he pulled over, Appellant placed the cell phone on the car’s center console. An officer took the phone out of the car and began looking at the text messages on it. Later, while Appellant was being processed at the jail the officer resumed looking at the text messages on the cell phone.

The 5th Circuit held that the search of the cell phone was constitutional since it took place incident to a lawful arrest and it was within Appellant’s reaching distance when the officers arrested him. The court followed U.S. v. Finley, 477 F.3d 250 (5th Cir.), which held that the police could search the contents of an arrestee’s cell phone incident to a valid arrest when it is recovered from the area within an arrestee’s immediate control.

Appellant argued that the officer’s search of the cell phone was unlawful in light of the Supreme Court’s holding in Gant, decided in 2009, which held in part that the police may “search a vehicle incident to a recent occupant’s arrest only when the arrestee is unsecured and within reaching distance of the passenger compartment at the time of arrest.”

The court refused to apply the rule announced by Gant to a search incident to arrest that occurred before Gant was decided. Additionally, the court stated that even if it had ruled the search of the cell phone was unlawful, it would have refused to suppress the text messages under the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule. The court noted that the good-faith exception applies to searches that were legal at the time they were conducted, but later determined to be unconstitutional by a subsequent change in the law.

My question is: Why did the officer feel he needed to search Appellant’s text messages? I’m pretty sure the iPhone does not have an app that turns the phone into a dangerous weapon. There should be no reason that the officer needed to conduct such a warrantless search. Luckily, however, this holding is narrow in that it appears that it does not apply to searches conducted after the Supreme Court decision in Gant.

UPDATE: Warrantless searches of cell phones are now unreasonable. 

Today, the Supreme Court ruled that dying declaration (classified in this case as "excited utterances") made to police officers and identifying the suspect, were admissible despite the fact that the witness did not later testify at trial.  The Court labeled the man's statements "non-testimonial" for purposes of the Confrontation Clause (and the Crawford case).  To read more about it, see CNN coverage HERE.

Read the Court's opinion in Michigan v. Bryant.

Justice Scalia did not mince words in his dissent:

Today's tale -- a story of five officers conducting successive examinations of a dying man with the primary purpose, not of obtaining and preserving his testimony regarding his killer, but of protecting him, them, and others from a murderer somewhere on the loose -- is so transparently false that professing to believe it demeans this institution.