Nelson v. State

Corey Nelson was charged with murder after a 2017 shooting in Cobb County. Police seized his iPhone, a Samsung phone, and a laptop under a search warrant the day after the killing, but forensic analysts did not extract data from the devices until years later, first under 2018 warrants and, after those were thrown out for being executed too late, under new warrants issued in 2020. Nelson asked the Supreme Court of Georgia to suppress the evidence pulled from his devices under the 2020 warrants, arguing the more than two-year gap between the original seizure and the eventual search violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches. The trial court had already rejected this argument, and the Supreme Court of Georgia agreed, holding that because Nelson had been jailed without bond the entire time and never asked for the devices back, his ownership-based interest in them was too diminished for the delay to be unconstitutional.

A lengthy delay between seizing electronic devices and searching their contents does not violate the Fourth Amendment when the defendant's possessory interest in the devices is greatly diminished by continuous pretrial incarceration and by never requesting their return, even though the delay itself was unusually long.

The ruling gives Georgia police and prosecutors more room to hold seized electronic devices for extended periods before searching them when a suspect is incarcerated and never demands their return, which could affect how defense attorneys advise jailed clients about asserting property rights.

Affirmed

1. The court applied a four-factor balancing test from prior Georgia case law for weighing delay in searching seized property: the significance of interference with possessory interest, the length of the delay, whether the person consented to the seizure, and the government's legitimate interest in holding the property as evidence.
2. It found the government had a legitimate interest in holding the devices as evidence, the delay was unusually long, and Nelson never consented to the seizure, leaving the significance of the interference with his possessory interest as the key disputed factor.
3. In assessing that interference, the court considered how strong Nelson's ownership-type interest in the devices was, how the delay affected that interest, and whether he tried to get the devices back, noting people generally have a strong interest in personal electronics like phones and laptops.
4. The court relied on the trial court's factual finding, which was not clearly wrong, that Nelson never asked for the devices to be returned, and concluded that a request for discovery of phone data is not the same as demanding the physical device back.
5. Because Nelson had been jailed without bond since his 2017 arrest and could not have used the devices anyway, his possessory interest in them was reduced, which limited how much the delay actually interfered with any real interest he had.
6. Weighing the government's strong interest in the evidence against Nelson's weakened possessory interest, the court concluded the trial judge was allowed to find the delay in getting the 2020 warrants did not violate the Fourth Amendment, distinguishing an earlier case where defendants had actively demanded their property's return.

• motion to suppress
• cell phone search
• Fourth Amendment
• search warrant delay
• Cobb County murder case