A Breakdown Of The SJC's Ruling Challenging Police Authority To Seize Cellphones

On Wednesday, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in the case of Commonwealth v. White that police do not have blanket authority to seize cellphones in criminal investigations.

The case had to do with police officers investigating an armed robbery and fatal shooting in 2010. The officers seized a suspect's cellphone from his high school without a search warrant. In order to do so, the officers needed probable cause that a warrant would have been approved, but the court ruled the suspicion that a phone may have contained evidence of the crime is insufficient.

Nancy Gertner, former Massachusetts federal judge, senior lecturer on law at Harvard Law School and WBUR legal analyst.