Keith Allen Shrum v. United States
FourthAmendment CriminalProcedure Privacy
1. Whether the exigent circumstances exception saves a warrantless seizure
of a defendant's phone when law enforcement could have obtained a warrant and
judges were available for such a purpose prior to contacting the defendant, had no
reason to believe evidence would be destroyed but for law enforcement's own action
in confronting the defendant, allowed the defendant to manipulate and hold the
phone unsupervised despite claiming a fear of imminent destruction of evidence, and
thereafter held the property for three days without attempting to locate any evidence
contained therein.
2. Whether a warrant which utilizes general language of "any and all other
evidence related to a sexual abuse/exploitation investigation" is sufficiently
particularized to allow seizure of electronics, or is instead an unconstitutional general
warrant; whether law enforcement exceeded the scope of such a warrant when they
seized electronics not described by the warrant; and whether the Leon exception may
nevertheless apply to data upon electronic devices and save the otherwise defunct
warrant when law enforcement subsequently utilized a warrant specific to the
electronics and police policy and practice required a specific warrant for reviewing
the contents of specific electronic devices.
Whether the exigent circumstances exception saves a warrantless seizure of a defendant's phone