Interesting Case Law

Slow Saturday night here, so I was browsing the Alameda County D.A. site and found this regarding suspects posting incriminating evidence on social media-


People v. Pride (2019) 31 Cal.App.5th 133 Issue Must officers obtain a warrant before they download photos or videos that a suspect posted on social media? Facts One night, a man identified as D.C. was robbed by five men in a parking lot in San Diego. During the holdup, one of the men yelled “This is West Coast,” which was apparently intended to notify D.C. that he had wandered into territory claimed by the West Coast Crips. The men then beat D.C. and took his shoes, iPad, watches, and a gold chain. Based on D.C.’s description of the perpetrators, a gang officer thought that one of them was Chaz Pride. So he checked Pride’s social media site and saw that Pride had just posted a video of himself wearing a gold chain around his neck and saying “Oh, check out the new chain, dog. Ya feel me? All on this thang.” The next day, the detective showed D.C. two photographs. One of them was a photo of the chain, the other was a photo of Pride without the chain. D.C. identified both. A few days later, officers obtained a warrant to search Pride’s home, and they found the chain and other items that had been taken during the robbery. Before trial, Pride filed a motion to suppress the evidence obtained as the result of the download. The motion was denied and Pride was convicted. Discussion On appeal, Pride urged the court to rule that officers must obtain a warrant in order to visit social media sites, pose as friends, and download photos or other contents. Specifically, he claimed that he “had an expectation of privacy in the [video] because the social media platform he used was intended for private messages, rather than messages open to the public.” The court rejected the argument, ruling that people who post videos, photos, or other messages on their social media sites cannot reasonably expect that a friend, a false friend, or police officer will not visit the site and download content that is readily available. As the court pointed out, “Pride voluntarily shared with his social media ‘friends’ a video of himself wearing the chain stolen from D.C. The fact he chose a social media platform where posts disappear after a period of time did not raise his expectation of privacy. Rather, in posting the video message, Pride assumed the risk that the account for one of his ‘friends’ could be an undercover profile for a police detective or that any other ‘friend’ could save and share the information with government officials.” Thus, Pride’s conviction was affirmed.