United States v. Charles Gary, 790 F.3d 704

Defendant Charles Gary was a passenger in a car whose driver sold heroin to an undercover detective after the detective called a known drug line; Gary was seen talking on a cell phone during the sale.
Officers stopped the vehicle at the direction of a narcotics detective; during a frisk they found heroin on the driver and patted down Gary, finding two cell phones in his pocket.
The arresting officer admitted he seized Gary to bring him to speak with Gary’s parole officer; the government concedes the seizure was an arrest.
At the station, after drugs fell from Gary’s pants and he was formally arrested, a detective later examined the phones and found one assigned to the drug line called earlier that morning.
Gary moved to suppress the phone- and drug-linked evidence, arguing (1) the arrest lacked probable cause and (2) the warrantless search of his cell phone was unlawful or exceeded the incident-to-arrest scope.
The district court denied suppression; the Seventh Circuit affirmed, addressing probable cause, search-incident-to-arrest precedent extant in 2009, and the good-faith exception after Davis.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Probable cause for Gary’s arrest	Gary: seizure was only to speak with parole officer and thus lacked probable cause	Gary: mere presence as passenger is insufficient for probable cause	Court: Probable cause existed—driver sold heroin openly next to Gary and collective knowledge imputed; presence plus circumstances supported inference of common enterprise
Warrantless search of cell phone	Gary: Riley requires a warrant for phone searches incident to arrest, so search violated Fourth Amendment	Gary: phone search exceeded scope and was later, at station, not contemporaneous	Court: Riley applies retroactively on direct appeal, so search would now be unauthorized as incident to arrest
Applicability of good-faith / binding precedent exception	Gary: evidence must be suppressed because search violated Fourth Amendment	Gary: officer may not have relied on Ortiz or circuit precedent; search late in day undermines reliance	Court: Under Davis/Leon, exclusion inappropriate—officer acted in objectively reasonable reliance on then-binding Seventh Circuit precedent (Ortiz, Rodriguez, Edwards, Robinson) permitting search of person/effects even at station
Collective knowledge doctrine	N/A	Government: arresting officers can rely on narcotics detective’s knowledge to establish probable cause	Court: Applied collective knowledge doctrine to impute investigation facts to arresting officers, supporting probable cause

Riley v. California, 134 S. Ct. 2473 (2014) (warrant generally required to search cell phones seized incident to arrest)
Davis v. United States, 131 S. Ct. 2419 (2011) (good-faith exception when officers follow binding appellate precedent)
United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218 (1973) (categorical rule allowing search of person incident to lawful arrest)
United States v. Edwards, 415 U.S. 800 (1974) (personal effects seized from arrestee may be searched at station)
United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1 (1977) (warrant required for searching property not immediately associated with person when search remote in time/place)
Maryland v. Pringle, 540 U.S. 366 (2003) (probable cause to arrest passenger in car with drugs and cash because common enterprise inference)
United States v. Ortiz, 84 F.3d 977 (7th Cir. 1996) (upholding pager search incident to arrest to identify assigned number)
United States v. Flores-Lopez, 670 F.3d 803 (7th Cir. 2012) (applied Ortiz to cell-phone number identification)
United States v. Rodriguez, 995 F.2d 776 (7th Cir. 1993) (upholding stationhouse search of wallet/address book as incident to arrest)
Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996) (subjective motives of officers irrelevant where objective probable cause exists)