Case Summaries: Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (June 2025)

This post summarizes published criminal law and related cases released by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals during June of 2025. Cases of potential interest to state practitioners are summarized monthly. Previous summaries of Fourth Circuit cases are available here. Military search warrant plainly did not authorize seizure and search of defendant’s cell phone and good faith exception did not apply U.S. v. Ray, 141 F.4th 129 (June 3, 2025). The defendant was employed as an engineer with the U.S. Navy. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) received a report that the defendant had sexually molested an 11-year-old autistic male child five to seven years earlier. According to the child, the defendant showed him pornographic videos on his phone and then had the child perform oral sex on him. An NCIS officer applied for a command authorization for search and seizure (CASS), the military version of a search warrant. The affidavit and a supporting attachment stated that probable cause existed to believe the defendant’s phone had evidence of child sexual assault. It noted that officers planned to fully extract the data on the phone. However, the CASS failed to authorize a search of the cell phone and did not incorporate by reference the affidavit or supporting attachment. Instead, the CASS only authorized a search of the defendant for the presence of a cell phone. Ultimately, the CASS was executed and NCIS agents seized the phone. The phone extraction yielded no information relating to the original crime of investigation but revealed other [...]