Search Warrants for Digital Devices and the Requirement that Warrants be Executed within 48 Hours

I’ve had several questions lately about the requirement in G.S. 15A-248 that “[a] search warrant must be executed within 48 hours from the time of issuance.” The specific concern is how this applies to searches of digital devices, which frequently require off-site forensic analysis that may not begin, let alone end, until substantially more than 48 hours after issuance of the warrant. Although we don’t have an appellate case on point in North Carolina, courts in other jurisdictions have held that so long as the initial seizure of the device is timely, the forensic analysis may be conducted later. The 48-hour rule. The 48-hour limit was adopted when Chapter 15A was enacted in 1973 and it has remained unchanged ever since. The official commentary indicates that “[f]ormerly, North Carolina law provided no time limit for the execution of search warrants” and that the new rule was designed to prevent searches based on information that has gone stale. The rule has been cited in the appellate division exactly once, in State v. Davidson, 131 N.C. App. 276 (1998). There, an investigator obtained a search warrant for a suspect’s bank records on April 22 and had it delivered to the bank on April 23, but did not receive the records from the bank until May 6. The court of appeals found that this was not a substantial violation of the 48-hour rule and that suppression of the records under the statutory exclusionary rule in G.S. 15A-974 was not appropriate. For context, many jurisdictions [...]