SJC: Camera search invalid

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Images found during a warrantless search of a digital camera found in a defendant’s backpack following his arrest should have been suppressed, the Supreme Judicial Court has ruled.

The defendant argued that the principles underlying the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Riley v. California, which foreclosed the application of the search incident to arrest exception to cellphones, also forecloses the application of this exception to warrantless searches of digital cameras.

The SJC agreed, applying the reasoning in Riley in holding that the search of the camera violated art. 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights.

“We hold, for the same reasons articulated by the Supreme Court in Riley …, that digital cameras may be seized incident to arrest, but that the search of data contained in digital cameras falls outside the scope of the search incident to arrest exception to the warrant requirement,” Justice Geraldine S. Hines wrote for a unanimous court.

“[W]e conclude that the search of the digital camera exceeded the bounds of the inventory search exception to the warrant requirement because it was investigatory in nature,” Hines added.

The 20-page decision is Commonwealth v. Mauricio, Lawyers Weekly No. 10-130-17.

Click here to read the full text of the opinion.