The Supreme Court case Riley v. California ruled that law enforcement must obtain a search warrant to search the cell phone of an arrested individual. The case involved David Riley, who was arrested for weapons possession and had his cell phone searched without a warrant, revealing evidence linking him to additional crimes. The Supreme Court unanimously decided that warrantless cell phone searches violate the 4th Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches. This established that police generally need a warrant before searching digital information on arrested persons' phones.

1. Running head: Case study 1 – understanding the court system 1
Case study 1 – understanding the court system9Case Study 1 –
Understanding the Court System
Student Name Goes Here
Strayer University: SOC 205 – Society, Law, and Government
Professor Clinton Gortney
April 22, 2018
RILEY v. CALIFORNIA
The significant court case of Riley v. California was a
recent case which ended up being appealed to the United States
Supreme Court where the landmark ruling was made that
requires law enforcement to obtain search warrants to search
cell phones from arrested persons (Riley v. California, 2014).
The decision made in this case was pivotal in its application to
the 4th Amendment’s protections against unreasonable search
and seizure and changed the way that many law enforcement
agencies across the country had to deal with procured electronic
devices. The case paves the way for a future examination of
technology as it advances far further than was likely speculated
by the founding fathers.
Seminal Facts of the Case
According to the opinion released by the United States
Supreme court in Riley v. California (2014) the facts of the case
are that on August 22, 2009, petitioner David Leon Riley was
stopped by the San Diego police for driving a vehicle bearing
expired registration tags. Documents further state that police
discovered that Mr. Riley had a suspended operators license and
therefore his vehicle was going to be impounded. Following
department policy, an inventory search was conducted on the
vehicle which produced two handguns hidden under the hood
(Riley v. California, 2014). As a result of this search, Mr.
Riley was arrested and charged with possession of concealed
and loaded firearms, a violation of California Penal Code
§12025(a)(1) and §12031(a)(1) (Riley v. California, 2014). Mr.

2. Riley was searched incident to the arrest, and this search
produced a “smartphone” in his pocket along with other articles
that were associated with gang activity according to the opinion
of the court. The police officer opened the phone and observed
several text messages that were indicative of gang activity and
language, and Mr. Riley was brought the police station for
further questioning (Riley v. California, 2014).
Approximately two hours after the arrest, a detective who
specialized in gang-related activity examined the phone and its
contents more closely according to the case documents. The
gang detective discovered numerous pictures to suggest further
that Mr. Riley was a gang member and then pictures of him with
a vehicle that matched the description of one used in a shooting
that had occurred earlier in the month (Riley v. California,
2014). The police, using this information, charged Mr. Riley
with firing at an occupied vehicle, assault with a semiautomatic
firearm, and attempted murder, violations of California Penal
Code §245(a)(2), §246, and §644(a) (Riley v. California, 2014).
Mr. Riley also faced a sentencing enhancement charge as the
offenses were believed to be gang-related, violation of
California Penal Code §186.22(b)(4)(B) (Riley v. California,
2014). Before going to trial in San Diego Superior Court, Mr.
Riley submitted a motion to suppress the evidence obtained
from the search of his cell phone, claiming that it violated the
Fourth Amendment since it was conducted without a search
warrant and there were no exigent circumstances (Riley v.
California, 2014). This motion was denied, and he was
subsequently convicted of all three charges (Riley v. California,
2014). He appealed this decision to the California Court of
Appeal which affirmed the decision of the lower court (Riley v.
California, 2014).
Laws and Penalties
The charges that Mr. Riley faced for the possession of the
two firearms, California Penal Code §12025(a)(1) and
§12031(a)(1) are both misdemeanors. §12025(a)(1) (Now
California Penal Code §25400(a)) states that:

3. (a) A person is guilty of carrying a concealed firearm when he
or she does any of the following:
(1) Carries concealed within any vehicle which is under his or
her control or direction any pistol, revolver, or other firearm
capable of being concealed upon the person (State of California,
n.d.).
This crime is punishable as a misdemeanor with a maximum
fine of up one year in county jail, a fine of up to $1,000, or
both. §12031(a)(1) (Now California Penal Code §25850(a))
states that:
A person is guilty of carrying a loaded firearm when the person
carries a loaded firearm on the person or in a vehicle while in
any public place or on any public street in an incorporated city
or in any public place or on any public street in a prohibited
area of unincorporated territory (State of California, n.d.).
This crime is also a misdemeanor, with the same penalties as
the previous charge. The original charges which caused the
arrest of Mr. Riley meant that he was facing a maximum of up
to two years imprisonment, a fine of up to $2,000, or both.
David Riley faced steep charges as a result of the evidence
that was uncovered from the search of the cell phone. The
charge of §245(a)(2) states that:
(1) Any person who commits an assault upon the person of
another with a firearm shall be punished by imprisonment in the
state prison for two, three, or four years, or in a county jail for
not less than six months and not exceeding one year, or by both
a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars ($10,000) and
imprisonment (State of California, n.d.).
The charge of §246 states:

4. Any person who shall maliciously and willfully discharge a
firearm at an inhabited dwelling house, occupied building,
occupied motor vehicle, occupied aircraft, inhabited housecar,
as defined in Section 362 of the Vehicle Code, or inhabited
camper, as defined in Section 243 of the Vehicle Code, is guilty
of a felony, and upon conviction shall be punished by
imprisonment in the state prison for three, five, or seven years,
or by imprisonment in the county jail for a term of not less than
six months and not exceeding one year (State of California,
n.d.).
The charge of §644(a) expresses that persons found guilty
of attempting to commit an offense, except for premeditated
murder, shall be sentenced to one-half prison terms of the fully
committed offense (State of California, n.d.). This means that
someone found guilty of attempted second-degree murder would
face a prison term of up to nine years.
Mr. Riley was additionally charged with the California
Penal Code §186.22(b)(4)(B) which makes is a sentencing
enhancement charge if the offense of §246 is gang-related. It
states:
(B) Imprisonment in the state prison for 15 years, if the felony
is a home invasion robbery, in violation of subparagraph (A) of
paragraph (1) of subdivision (a) of Section 213; carjacking, as
defined in Section 215; a felony violation of Section 246; or a
violation of Section 12022.55 (State of California, n.d.).
Mr. Riley, therefore, faced a total of up to thirty-five years
to life imprisonment and a fine of up to $10,000 for the criminal
charges that he faced as a result of the evidence discovered
from the search of his cell phone. He ultimately was convicted
of these three charges in the trial court of California and
sentenced to fifteen years to life in prison as a result.
State or Federal Jurisdiction
The case was initially brought before San Deigo Superior

5. Court, the state court in California which hears felony charges.
The charges which were brought against Mr. Riley were
violations of the California Penal Code, which governs criminal
offenses in the state, and did not include any federal criminal
charges, which would have to be heard in the federal court
system. As such, when Mr. Riley was found guilty, his appeal
to the decision against his motion to suppress the evidence
collected from his phone went to the California Court of
Appeal, Fourth District, Divison 1 (Riley v. California, 2014).
This court affirmed the ruling of the lower court and cited the
precedent of the California Supreme Court in a 2011 case
People v. Diaz, in which the highest state court had held that
searches of cell phones were permitted under the Fourth
Amendment (Riley v. California, 2014).
Mr. Riley then appealed directly to the United States Supreme
Court requesting certiorari in this case. The Supreme Court
agreed to hear the case in part to the arguments bearing such
constitutional weight and the issue that at least six courts
currently held that a warrantless search of a cell phone was
allowed during a search incident to arrest, while three others
held that a warrant was required (Barnes, 2014). This conflict
in lower federal and state courts created a split in thinking that
needed to be addressed by the Supreme Court to settle the
constitutional issue involved. The question at hand in this case
before the Supreme Court was whether the evidence obtained
from the warrantless search of the cell phone violated David
Riley’s Fourth Amendment protections under the constitution.
Summary of the Case
The United States Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision of 9-
0 ruled that barring some exigent circumstances, a search
warrant was required to search a cell phone (Riley v. California,
2014). The Court reversed the ruling of the California Court of
Appeals and affirmed the United States 1st Circuit Court, from
which a similar case with a ‘common question’ was brought in
United States v. Wurie (Harvard Law Review, 2014). In the

6. opinion written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the court
cited the previous decision of Chimel v. California, 395 U. S.
752 (1969) where it ruled that a warrantless search incident to
arrest was reasonable (Riley v. California, 2014). It cited the
Court’s reasonableness standard that is laid out in that decision
as follows:
“When an arrest is made, it is reasonable for the arresting
officer to search the person arrested in order to remove any
weapons that the latter might seek to use in order to resist arrest
or effect his escape. Otherwise, the officer’s safety might well
be endangered, and the arrest itself frustrated. In addition, it is
entirely reasonable for the arresting officer to search for and
seize any evidence on the arrestee’s person in order to prevent
its concealment or destruction... There is ample justification,
therefore, for a search of the arrestee’s person and the area
‘within his immediate control’—construing that phrase to mean
the area from within which he might gain possession of a
weapon or destructible evidence.” Id., at 762–763 (Riley v.
California, 2014).
The Court recognized that modern-day cell phones were
unthinkable when this previous ruling came out and they
contain vast amounts of personal information in them (Riley v.
California, 2014). In reviewing this case and comparing it to
Chimel v. California, the Court determined that this case did not
meet the standard of reasonableness established there. Once the
cell phone was removed, there was harm that the digital
information stored on the phone could cause to the officers or
others and there was no reason to think the evidence could be
destroyed now that the police secured it.
I believe that this ruling was the correct one. While it is
regrettable that there was indeed substantial evidence to support
the conviction of Mr. Riley, this evidence was obtained through
a warrantless search, and the Court must always weigh the
importance of the rights enumerated in the constitution to all

7. people. The Court did not completely shut the door to a
warrantless search of a cell phone but instead allowed the
reasonableness of such a search to be judged on a case by case
basis to see if it met the exigent circumstances (Riley v.
California, 2014). This decision means that there could be a
reason in the future where a warrantless search would be
reasonable on a cell phone based on the totality of
circumstances that surround that search. That being said, the
significant amount of digital information stored on peoples
phones does raise strong privacy issues that I believe were
weighed correctly by the court to provide proper protection to
the people as intended by the founding fathers.
References
Barnes, R. (2014, January 17). Supreme Court to decide case on
police cellphone searches. Retrieved from The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-to-
decide-case-on-police-cellphone-searches/2014/01/17/b0f3c61e-
7f8a-11e3-93c1-
0e888170b723_story.html?utm_term=.0fab1739278e
Harvard Law Review. (2014, November 10). Riley v. California.
Retrieved from Harvard Law Review:
https://harvardlawreview.org/2014/11/riley-v-california/
Riley v. California, 13-132, 573 U.S (U.S. Supreme Court June
25, 2014).
State of California. (n.d.). Retrieved from California Legislative
Information: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/home.xhtml