People v. Davis, 2019 CO 24

Shaun Davis was arrested and twice voluntarily gave Officer Woodbury his iPhone passcode so the officer could locate and call Davis’s girlfriend about a car.
Davis did not place any explicit limitation on use of the passcode when he gave it to the officer.
Police later obtained a judicial warrant to search Davis’s phone and used the previously supplied passcode to unlock the device and execute the warrant.
Davis moved to suppress: he argued his statements about the passcode were involuntary/Miranda violations and that the warrant was overbroad; the trial court rejected those claims.
The trial court nonetheless suppressed the phone evidence, concluding the search exceeded the limited consent Davis had given for the passcode (viewing the unlocking as a consent search beyond scope).
The People appealed interlocutorily; the Colorado Supreme Court considered only whether using the passcode to execute the warrant violated the Fourth Amendment.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether using the passcode to unlock the phone and execute a valid warrant violated the Fourth Amendment	People: Search was pursuant to a valid warrant; use of the passcode to execute the warrant is lawful	Davis: Providing passcode was limited consent (to retrieve girlfriend’s number); using it later to search exceeded scope and converted the search into an unlawful consent search	Court: Use of the passcode to execute a valid warrant did not violate the Fourth Amendment — search was warrant-based, not an overbroad consent search
Whether Davis retained a reasonable expectation of privacy in the digits of his passcode after voluntarily disclosing them to police	People: Voluntary disclosure to police forfeits any reasonable expectation of privacy in the passcode	Davis: Even if voluntarily disclosed, the passcode was given for a limited purpose and remained private as to broader searches	Court: By voluntarily giving the passcode to an officer, Davis did not manifest a legitimate expectation of privacy in the passcode digits; society would not regard such an expectation as reasonable

Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (recognizes searches occur when government intrudes on legitimate privacy expectations)
Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (establishes subjective and objective expectation of privacy test)
Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373 (cell phones generally require a warrant to search because of their unique privacy interests)
Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206 (recognizes heightened privacy in digital/location data; warrants generally required)
Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218 (consent is a recognized exception to the warrant requirement)
United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435 (no protected privacy interest in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties)
United States v. White, 401 U.S. 745 (no Fourth Amendment protection for information voluntarily conveyed to an informant/government agent)
Hoffa v. United States, 385 U.S. 293 (similar to White: disclosures to third parties and agents do not carry Fourth Amendment protection)
People v. Carper, 876 P.2d 582 (Colo. 1994) (voluntary disclosure to officer waived expectation of privacy in revealed object)
People v. Gutierrez, 222 P.3d 925 (Colo. 2009) (discusses limits on expectation of privacy in information shared with third parties)