by Anthony W. Accurso

The Supreme Court of Michigan held that a search warrant was insufficiently particular in violation of the Fourth Amendment because it permitted investigators to search “any and all data” on the defendant’s cellphone with the only instruction limiting the scope of the search was that it must be for evidence “pertaining to the investigation of Larceny in a Building and Safe Breaking.”

Background

In August 2019, Don Billings underwent back surgery and, due to resulting mobility issues, moved out of his home temporarily. Experiencing these health problems, he decided to allow a neighboring couple, Michael Carson and his girlfriend Brandie DeGroff, access to his home to sell some of his property online in exchange for 20% of the proceeds. Billings, a collector of various items including coins and silver certificates, provided them with a house key and specified which items to sell. A couple of months later, after noticing many items were unaccounted for – including collectible coins and rolls of quarters from his bedroom – he ended the arrangement and requested the key back. 

In late November 2019, Billings discovered that his two large safes had been jammed. With a locksmith’s help, he opened them and discovered that all the cash (approximately $60,000 in yellow-banded stacks of hundred-dollar bills) from a smaller fireproof safe inside one of them was gone, along with silver certificates, coins, and silver bars. Billings contacted police. He subsequently testified that only Carson and DeGroff had access to the safes and that he had not authorized them to open or sell their contents.

The couple were arrested on suspicion of larceny and safebreaking in February 2020, and Carson’s cellphone was also seized on February 26, 2020. Police obtained a warrant to search it, and they located a string of incriminating text messages exchanged between Carson and DeGroff, which referenced the safes’ contents (including speculation about a “million dollars” inside), missing items, their financial stresses, and an admission related to stealing $60,000. This evidence, combined with circumstantial evidence relating to the couple’s sudden and lavish spending habits around the same time convinced a jury of their guilt.

At trial, Carson’s defense argued that the prosecution failed to prove the safes were broken into, suggesting Billings might have lied or been confused due to his age and pain medications, and presented evidence of Carson’s income from his brother’s construction company (approximately $25,000 in 2019 via bank transfers, though undocumented). They were sentenced to 10 to 20 years for safebreaking, 9 to 20 years for larceny and concealing stolen property in excess of $20,000, 3 to 15 years for larceny from a building, and a prison term for each conspiracy conviction that matched the sentence for its underlying offense.

On direct appeal, the Court of Appeals held that the warrant to search Carson’s cellphone was insufficiently particular, his attorney was constitutionally ineffective for failing to seek exclusion of the phone’s contents, and that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule did not apply. The State timely appealed.

Analysis

The Michigan Supreme Court began its analysis by noting that jurisprudence surrounding cellphone searches drastically changed with the U.S. Supreme Court case of Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373 (2014), which held that the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement applies to the search of a cellphone seized incident to an arrest. The Court emphasized the profound privacy interests at stake in such searches, quoting Riley’s observation that a cellphone can contain “the sum of an individual’s private life” and that “[a] cell phone search would typically expose the government to far more than the most exhaustive search of a house.” Riley.

The Court explained that modern cellphones are not mere conveniences but repositories of vast personal data, often spanning years and encompassing intimate details – from communications and photos to health records and financial information – making them akin to a “digital record of nearly every aspect of [one’s] li[fe].” Id. The Court explained that this heightened privacy concern necessitates applying Fourth Amendment protections with “equal force” to cellphone data as to physical homes, including stringent adherence to the particularity requirement, which mandates that warrants “particularly describ[e] the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” U.S. Const. amend. IV.

The Court discussed the particularity requirement’s purpose, citing precedents like Maryland v. Garrison, 480 U.S. 79 (1987), which instructs that “[b]y limiting the authorization to search to the specific areas and things for which there is probable cause to search, the requirement ensures that the search will be carefully tailored to its justifications, and will not take on the character of the wide-ranging exploratory searches the Framers intended to prohibit.” Garrison. Whether a warrant meets this standard “depends on the circumstances and the types of items involved,” with courts assessing if it describes items “with as much particularity as the circumstances reasonably allow.” People v. Brcic, 994 N.W.2d 812 (Mich. Ct. App. 2022) (citing Steele v. United States, 267 U.S. 498 (1925); United States v. Galpin, 720 F.3d 436 (2d Cir. 2013)).

In the digital context, this demands “heightened sensitivity” to prevent “exploratory rummaging” because cellphones are “especially vulnerable” to such intrusions due to their vast, unstructured data. Galpin (concluding it appropriate to view the particularity requirement in the context of digital searches with a “heightened sensitivity”); United States v. Russian, 848 F.3d 1239 (10th Cir. 2017) (recognizing the importance of the particularity requirement for searches of digital information because such searches are “especially vulnerable to a worrisome exploratory rummaging by the government”); Commonwealth v. Dorelas, 43 N.E.3d 306 (Mass. 2016) (“[G]iven the properties that render an iPhone distinct from the closed containers regularly seen in the physical world, a search of its many files must be done with special care and satisfy a more narrow and demanding standard.”).

The Michigan Supreme Court adopted the “heightened sensitivity” reasoning in People v. Hughes, 958 N.W.2d 98 (Mich. 2020). The police in Hughes obtained a warrant to search the defendant’s cellphone for evidence of drug trafficking but later, and without obtaining a second warrant, also searched the same phone for evidence of another unrelated crime – armed robbery. The Hughes Court held that the second search violated the Fourth Amendment since the only warrant specified material related to drug trafficking, not armed robbery. The Court explained that Hughes underscores that “a search of digital data from a cell phone must be reasonably directed at uncovering evidence of the criminal activity alleged in the warrant,” and any deviation exceeds the warrant’s scope. Hughes. It rejects blanket reviews of all data based on the “mere possibility” of hidden evidence because this would “nullify the particularity requirement” and enable “unbridled discretion to rummage at will,” especially problematic given the “sheer amount of information contained in cellular data and the highly personal character of much of that information.” Id. (citing Riley).

Turning to the present case, the Court observed that the warrant for Carson’s cellphone began by authorizing the search of “[a]ny and all records or documents pertaining to the investigation of Larceny in a Building and Safe Breaking.” The rest of the warrant provided a non-exhaustive list of types of data that might be relevant during the search, and authorized the police to obtain biometric data to access it. This included seizing cellular devices, keys, encryption items, passwords, and broadly “[a]ny and all data including text messages, text/picture messages, pictures and videos, address book,” along with any electronically stored data interpretable by a phone or computer.

The Court of Appeals wrote that the warrant “was an unconstitutional general warrant that gave the police license to search everything on defendant’s cellphone in the hopes of finding anything, but nothing in particular, that could help with the investigation.” The majority concluded that the warrant lacked meaningful limitations, with its only specificity – the reference to larceny and safebreaking – undermined by instructions to seize the phone’s entirety, including irrelevant categories like photographs and videos. This raised concerns about unfettered access to sensitive data, such as health records, rendering it the type of “wide-ranging exploratory search[] the framers intended to prohibit.” The majority stressed that cellphone warrants “must be carefully limited in scope,” with “guardrails” even if not pinpointing exact items or locations.

 The Court agreed with the Court of Appeals that the warrant was insufficiently particular. It approached the warrant from the perspective of “practical accuracy, as opposed to technical precision.” United States v. Tompkins, 118 F.4th 280 (2d Cir. 2024); see also People v. Russo, 487 N.W.2d 698 (Mich. 1992) (warrants read in a “common-sense and realistic manner”). It determined that, “even viewed through the lens of common sense, the search warrant at issue is a hard-to-decipher amalgamation of seemingly unrelated boilerplate language in one long paragraph.” The Court stated that the opening clause offered some limitation, but the subsequent broad authorizations – for “any and all data” – shifted discretion to officers, failing to guide a “limited and constitutionally particular search.” See Marron v. United States, 275 U.S. 192, 196 (1927) (particularity ensures “nothing is left to the discretion of the officer executing the warrant”). It ultimately decided that the language limiting the search to evidence of a specific crime “is necessary, but not usually sufficient to ensure adequate particularity in the context of a cell-phone search warrant.” State v. Wilson, 884 S.E.2d 298 (Ga. 2023) (“a caveat that the search is limited to evidence of a particular crime … gives little or no clarity to an officer as to where to look, for what to look, or how to look for it”).

The Court discussed what satisfies particularity in cellphone warrants, emphasizing that there is no per se rule but requiring specificity “as the circumstances presented permit and consistent with the nature of the item to be searched.” United States v. Leary, 846 F.2d 592 (10th Cir. 1988) (warrants must describe items “with as much specificity as the government’s knowledge and circumstances allow”). Common guardrails include temporal limitations, as unbounded data searches invade privacy profoundly given that cellphone data often dates back years. Commonwealth v. Snow, 160 N.E.3d 277 (Mass. 2021) (“The magnitude of the privacy invasion of a cell phone search utterly lacking in temporal limits cannot be overstated.”). When a relevant timeframe is known, it should be included. Another limit involves data categories: warrants authorizing searches of “any and all information” or effectively all data often fail particularity. State v. Henderson, 854 N.W.2d 616 (Neb. 2014); Terreros v. State, 312 A.3d 651 (Del. 2024). Specificity must balance against uncertainty about evidence locations, but broader scopes demand stronger probable cause showings. State v. Goynes, 927 N.W.2d 346 (Neb. 2019); Burns v. United States, 235 A.3d 758 (D.C. 2020) (quoting United States v. Bass, 785 F.3d 1043 (6th Cir. 2015)). Ultimately, warrants must enable officers to “reasonably direct” searches at relevant evidence. Hughes. That is, “the degree of particularity required to adequately direct a search depends on the crime being investigated and the items sought,” the Court instructed. Applying the foregoing principles to the current case, the Court concluded that the warrant’s breadth allowed intolerable “exploratory rummaging” through unlimited private data.

Having ruled that the warrant was invalid, the Court turned to the issue of whether counsel was constitutionally inadequate. Though Carson’s counsel filed a motion to suppress the cellphone as improperly seized (which was denied), counsel did not challenge the scope of the search of the phone. Under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), ineffective assistance requires showing (1) performance below an objective reasonableness standard and (2) prejudice – a reasonable probability of a different outcome. People v. Yeager, 999 N.W.2d 490 (Mich. 2023). Performance is judged “on the facts of the particular case, viewed as of the time of counsel’s conduct,” without hindsight. Strickland; People v. Grant, 684 N.W.2d 686 (Mich. 2004). Novel arguments need not be advanced, People v. Reed, 556 N.W.2d 858 (Mich. 1996), but existing precedent supporting suppression cannot be ignored, People v. Hughes (On Remand), 981 N.W.2d 182 (Mich. Ct. App. 2021). 

Though the Court of Appeals held this was a misunderstanding of the law and not a valid trial strategy – finding prejudice given the text messages’ “definitive” role amid otherwise “persuasive” circumstantial evidence – the Court did not agree. It noted that Hughes was decided more than six months after the suppression issue was litigated in Carson’s case. It reasoned: “While hindsight, the Court’s decision in Hughes, and five additional years of technological advances and court decisions might have rendered the lack-of-particularity argument an obvious basis for a motion to suppress, the record supports the conclusion that counsel’s decision to file a motion to suppress on a different ground was not based on a misunderstanding of the law as it existed at the time and could be fairly characterized as an exercise of reasonable professional judgement under the facts and circumstances that existed when the decision was made.” Riley addressed warrants generally, not particularity, and post-2020 cases from other states clarified digital particularity, the Court explained. Thus, the Court ruled that counsel’s focus on seizure was reasonable, not deficient.

Conclusion

Accordingly, the Court upheld Carson’s conviction and remanded the case for the Court of Appeals to consider his remaining issues. See: People v. Carson, 2025 Mich. LEXIS 1402 (2025).

Editor’s note: Anyone with an interest in the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement as it relates to search warrants for cellphones is encouraged to read the Court’s full opinion.  

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