State v. Sayles

Syllabus

The defendant, who had been convicted of felony murder and several other crimes, appealed, claiming that the trial court improperly denied his motions to suppress his cell phone that was seized by the police and the information it contained. The defendant and two other men, V and S, had driven to and parked their car near a convenience store. V remained in the car while the defendant and S went into the store, robbed it of cash and cigars, and fatally shot the victim, an employee, before fleeing in the car with V. The police later took a statement from V, who identified the defendant and S as the perpetrators of the robbery and murder, and stated that they had contacted him by cell phone or that he had contacted them by cell phone on the day of the victim's death. The next day, the defendant spoke with two detectives at the police station. After the defendant invoked his right to counsel pursuant to Miranda v. Arizona (384 U.S. 436), one of the detectives, P, asked the defendant where his cell phone was located. The defendant responded that the phone was with his mother, who was waiting outside of the interview room. P then asked the defendant's mother for the cell phone, which she gave him. The next day, P prepared an affidavit in support of an application for a search and seizure warrant to obtain the contents of the phone. The defendant claimed in his first motion to suppress that the police lacked probable cause to seize his phone at the police station and that the detectives improperly continued ques- tioning him after he invoked his right to counsel pursuant to Miranda. He further claimed that the subsequent search of the phone's contents constituted fruit of the poisonous tree as a result of P's having prepared an inaccurate affidavit as part of the warrant application. In his second motion to suppress, the defendant sought to suppress the contents of and cellular data from the phone due to alleged violations of the federal and state constitutions. He claimed