United States v. Darrell Mark Babcock

NEWSOM, Circuit Judge:

In this case, police officers investigating a domestic disturbance confiscated a suspect's cell phone and held it for two days before eventually obtaining a warrant to search it. The appeal before us presents two Fourth Amendment questions. First, was the seizure justified on the ground that the officers had reasonable suspicion to believe that the phone's owner was engaged in criminal wrongdoing-was it, in effect, a permissible " Terry stop" of the phone? We hold that it was not. Second, in the particular circumstances of this case, did the officers have probable cause…