Fergie's Tech Blog

Police 'Search' of Cell Phone May Doom Baltimore Murder Case

Julie Bykowicz writes in The Baltimore Sun:

To city prosecutors, the problem with the West Baltimore double murder case was laid out in the charging documents:

A police officer asked Davon David Temple, the 17-year-old suspect, "if he could have a look at his phone to see if there were any gang members [listed] in the phone. Davon gave Lt. [William] Davis permission to look in his phone. While Lt. Davis was looking at the contacts of the phone, he found a text message."

It was a potentially a powerful piece of evidence. "I killed 2 white people around my way 2day & 1 of them was a woman," the message read.

But prosecutors said that the officer might have exceeded the consent that Temple had given. Prosecutors said the officer was wrong to delve into all the contents of Temple's phone without a search warrant, and Wednesday they dropped charges against him, including two counts of first-degree murder.

posted by Fergie @ 6/07/2006 07:35:00 PM