State v. Bales
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The Supreme Court affirmed the order of the circuit court sustaining Defendant's motion to suppress a cell phone and electronic data stored on that cell phone, holding that the circuit court did not err in sustaining the motion to suppress.
The circuit court concluded that the search warrant failed to describe with sufficient particularity the thing to be seized and was so facially deficient that the executing officers could not reasonably have presumed it to be valid. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding (1) the seizure of a cell phone at the sheriff's office was outside the scope of the warrant, so the evidence was not validly seized; and (2) the officer conducting the search did not have a good faith basis when he executed the search warrant at the sheriff's office, contrary to the clear directions of the search warrant to search a cell phone located at a particular address.
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