State v. Hinton, 179 Wash. 2d 862

Background

Police arrested Daniel Lee for heroin possession and seized his iPhone; Detective Kevin Sawyer took custody of the phone at the station while it continued receiving messages.
Sawyer read incoming texts, then posed as Lee, exchanged messages arranging drug transactions, and made controlled buys that led to arrests (first Roden, then Shawn Hinton).
Hinton was charged with attempted possession of heroin after Sawyer responded to a text from “Z‑Shawn Hinton” on Lee’s phone and arranged a sale.
Hinton moved to suppress evidence, arguing the warrantless access violated article I, §7 of the Washington Constitution, the Fourth Amendment, and the Washington privacy act; the trial court denied suppression and Court of Appeals affirmed.
The Washington Supreme Court granted review, considered only the state constitutional claim, and reversed Hinton’s conviction, holding the warrantless search of Lee’s phone invaded Hinton’s private affairs under article I, §7.

Issues

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument (Hinton)	Defendant's Argument (State)	Held
Whether a sender retains a privacy interest in text messages delivered to a third party’s phone	Hinton: Text messages are private communications; sending to a recipient does not eliminate a sender’s state constitutional privacy interest absent a warrant	State: Once messages are sent to another’s device, the sender’s expectation of privacy is lost; no Article I, §7 protection in messages on a third‑party phone	Held: Sender retains a privacy interest; viewing and responding to texts on Lee’s phone without a warrant invaded Hinton’s private affairs under article I, §7
Whether article I, §7 requires a warrant to read text messages on a seized phone (absent an applicable exception)	Hinton: Article I, §7 protects communications and requires a warrant absent a narrowly drawn exception	State: Argued no warrantless search violation because messages were not private once delivered to recipient’s device	Held: Article I, §7 requires a warrant to intrude on such private communications; State offered no exception, so search was unjustified
Whether viewing a message that appears on a phone screen is merely plain‑view (no search)	Hinton: The detective’s continued manipulation and interactive use (posing as Lee) went well beyond passive plain‑view observation	State: Implied that visible screen messages are exposed and not protected	Held: Only the single isolated displayed fragment might be plain view; the officer’s further access and impersonation constituted a warrantless intrusion into private affairs
Standing: Whether Hinton may challenge the search of Lee’s phone	Hinton: He retained a private‑affairs interest in messages he sent and thus has standing to seek exclusion	State: Hinton lacks a personal privacy interest in a third party’s phone and so lacks standing	Held: Hinton had standing because the search disturbed his own private affairs in the text communications, so he could invoke article I, §7 protection

Key Cases Cited

City of Ontario v. Quon, 560 U.S. 746 (2010) (assumed without deciding that text messages may have Fourth Amendment privacy)
Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967) (Fourth Amendment search test based on reasonable expectation of privacy)
Gunwall v. State, 106 Wn.2d 54 (1986) (Washington’s strong tradition of protecting telephonic and electronic communications under article I, §7)
State v. Young, 123 Wn.2d 173 (1994) (recognizing broad right to privacy under article I, §7)
State v. Roden, 179 Wn.2d 893 (2014) (Washington privacy act protects text messages from interception without consent or court order)
State v. Goucher, 124 Wn.2d 778 (1994) (limitations on standing where information is voluntarily exposed to strangers)
State v. Athan, 160 Wn.2d 354 (2007) (police ruse causing mailing of evidence; voluntariness can extinguish some privacy interests)
United States v. Zavala, 541 F.3d 562 (5th Cir. 2008) (recognizing cell phones contain a wealth of private information, including text messages)