## Facts

- Federal agents suspected Reece William Bowman of selling methamphetamine.
- Agents arrested Bowman’s associate, Michael Schabell, who voluntarily consented to a search of his own cell phone, including text messages.
- An agent read texts indicating Bowman had recently sold Schabell methamphetamine and recorded Bowman’s name and phone number from Schabell’s phone.
- Using a government phone, the agent texted Bowman while posing as Schabell and arranged a meeting to purchase more methamphetamine.
- State officers arrested Bowman at the meeting and found methamphetamine on his person and in his vehicle.
- Bowman was charged and convicted of possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver.

## Issues

1. Whether article I, section 7 of the Washington Constitution was violated when police searched Schabell’s phone for text messages pursuant to Schabell’s voluntary consent, even though the messages involved Bowman.
2. Whether article I, section 7 or the Fourth Amendment was violated when an agent used information from the consensual phone search to impersonate Schabell and initiate a new text-message exchange with Bowman to arrange a drug transaction.

## Decision

- The Washington Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals and reinstated Bowman’s conviction.
- The consensual search of Schabell’s phone supplied the “authority of law” required by article I, section 7 to access text messages stored on that phone.
- Bowman’s privacy interest in the texts did not negate Schabell’s ability to consent to a search of his own device.
- The subsequent undercover text-message ruse, based on lawfully obtained information, did not constitute an unlawful search, privacy invasion, or trespass under article I, section 7 or the Fourth Amendment.

## Legal Principles

- Article I, section 7 prohibits disturbance of “private affairs” without “authority of law,” which can be satisfied by valid voluntary consent.
- Text messages are generally part of a protected “private affair,” but lawful third-party consent to search the consenting party’s phone permits police to access and use the messages found there.
- A prior decision recognizing privacy interests in texts stored on another’s device does not control when police obtain the messages through a constitutionally valid exception to the warrant requirement (such as voluntary consent).
- Sending texts to a suspect while impersonating another person, and receiving the suspect’s voluntary responses, is treated as undercover communication rather than a search or trespass when it does not intrude into preexisting private data or physically/technologically invade the suspect’s property.
- Under the Fourth Amendment, valid consent to search a phone defeats a claim that reviewing the phone’s contents was an unlawful search, and later use of the information to conduct an undercover text exchange is not itself a separate search.

## Conclusion

The court held that voluntary consent by a phone’s owner authorizes police to review text messages on that phone under article I, section 7, and that police may then use lawfully obtained information to conduct an undercover text-message operation without creating a new state or federal constitutional violation.


State v. Bowman, 198 Wash. 2d 609, 498 P.3d 478 (Wash. 2021)