## Facts

- Michael Lustig was arrested at a hotel for soliciting prostitution.
- During a search incident to arrest, officers recovered car keys from Lustig.
- Deputies located Lustig’s car in the hotel parking lot, impounded it, and conducted a pre-towing inventory search.
- In the car, deputies found multiple cell phones.
- Rather than merely listing or securing the phones, deputies examined their digital contents and photographed or downloaded text messages, focusing on prostitution-related communications.
- At the suppression hearing, neither party introduced evidence establishing the sheriff’s department’s written inventory-search policy or any standardized criteria governing the scope of an inventory, particularly as to electronic data.

## Issues

1. Whether a warrantless search of the digital contents of cell phones found in an impounded vehicle can be justified as an inventory search absent proof of standardized criteria or an established routine authorizing such a search.
2. Whether any other exception to the warrant requirement justified the warrantless digital searches of the cell phones found in the vehicle.

## Decision

- The court granted Lustig’s motion to suppress evidence obtained from the warrantless searches of the cell phones found in the vehicle.
- The court held the government failed to carry its burden to show the search fell within the inventory-search exception because it did not prove the existence and scope of a standardized inventory policy authorizing inspection of digital contents.
- The court declined to uphold the searches under alternative warrant exceptions on the record presented.

## Legal Principles

- Warrantless searches are presumptively unreasonable; the government bears the burden to prove a recognized exception applies.
- A valid vehicle inventory search must be conducted pursuant to standardized criteria or an established routine and must serve caretaking purposes rather than investigative objectives.
- When the government relies on the inventory-search exception, it must establish the existence and contours of the governing policy and show officers acted within its limits.
- Securing and listing physical property may be consistent with caretaking rationales, but inspecting digital data on seized devices requires specific policy authorization; otherwise, the search resembles impermissible evidentiary rummaging.

## Conclusion

The court suppressed evidence from deputies’ warrantless review of text messages on cell phones found in an impounded car because the government did not prove any standardized inventory-search policy that authorized searching digital contents, and the inventory-search exception therefore did not justify the intrusion.


United States v. Lustig, 3 F. Supp. 3d 808 (S.D. Cal. 2014)