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Timothy Stevenson v. Maryland

Paid petition · Court of Appeals of Maryland, No. 92, September Term, 2016 · judgment August 31, 2017

Certiorari denied · January 8, 2018

Pre-decision estimate: 1% cert probability

Before the decision, well below the 4.1% base rate, with no standout signals pointing toward a grant.

Questions presented

In Riley v. California, 134 S. Ct. 2473 (2014), this Court held that police officers must generally obtain a warrant before searching a cell phone seized incident to arrest because of the distinctive privacy interests in digital information. The Court did not address what a search warrant application for a cell phone must contain in order to establish probable cause. The questions presented are:

Does the Fourth Amendment permit the issuance of a search warrant for a cell phone absent case-specific facts connecting the alleged crime and the phone?
Does the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule apply where the search warrant application for a cell phone lacks case-specific facts connecting the alleged crime and the phone?

Counsel of record

For petitioner
Katherine Parks Rasin
Maryland Office of the Public Defender

For respondent
Carrie J. Williams
Goodell DeVries Leech & Dann

Case

Conference history
Distributed for 1 conference

Proceedings

Jan 08 2018
Petition DENIED.
Dec 20 2017
DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 1/5/2018.
Dec 06 2017
Waiver of right of respondent State of Maryland to respond filed.
Nov 28 2017
Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due January 2, 2018)