State of Minnesota v. Deshon Israel Bonnell

Syllabus

1. A sender of an electronic message does not retain a reasonable expectation of privacy in the digital copy of the received message that is stored in the recipient's separate and independent account or device. 2. Appellant's Fourth Amendment and state constitutional protections were not triggered when the law enforcement officers searched his accomplices' Facebook accounts because appellant claims no ownership interest in those accounts and he did not retain a legitimate expectation of privacy in the electronic messages he sent to his accomplices after the messages were received and stored in his accomplices' Facebook accounts. 3. Appellant's Fourth Amendment and state constitutional protections were violated by law enforcement's searches of his two Facebook accounts because the warrant authorizing the searches of his two Facebook accounts lacked any temporal or subject- matter limitations. 4. Although the district court erred when it failed to suppress the evidence collected exclusively during the search of appellant's two Facebook accounts and when it later admitted that evidence at trial, the errors were harmless beyond a reasonable doubt because the jury's verdict was surely unattributable to the errors. 5. Assuming without deciding that the district court abused its discretion by admitting the contents of constitutionally obtained social media messages pursuant to the immediate episode and Spreigl exceptions to Minnesota Rule of Evidence 404(b), the errors were harmless because they did not significantly affect the verdict. 6. When viewed in a light most favorable to the verdict, the corroborative evidence was weighty enough to restore confidence in the truth of the accomplice's eyewitness testimony that appellant fatally shot the decedent, and the State presented sufficient evidence to support appellant's conviction. Affirmed.