Smith v. State
Indiana Court of Appeals
713 N.E.2d 338 (1999)
- Written by Sharon Feldman, JD
Facts
State police officers pulled over a blue-and-white car bearing a license plate registered to a yellow car. Jermaine Smith (defendant), the owner of the car, was sitting in the front passenger seat. The officers asked Smith if they could search the car for guns, drugs, money, or illegal contraband. Smith consented. The officers found two cellular flip phones. Smith claimed one of the phones belonged to his girlfriend. An officer performed a short-out field test on each phone. The tests revealed that the phones’ internal electronic serial numbers did not match the external electronic serial numbers, indicating that the phones had been cloned, meaning reprogrammed so that the charges would be billed to someone else’s telephone number. A law-enforcement hotline indicated that the phone Smith said belonged to his girlfriend was assigned to a legitimate customer of GTE Mobilnet. Smith admitted he knew the phone was cloned. Smith was charged with theft. The court denied Smith’s motion to suppress the seized phone. Smith was convicted and argued on appeal that the evidence gained by the officers’ field test of the phone was the product of an unreasonable search and seizure.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Kirsch, J.)
What to do next…
Here's why 834,000 law students have relied on our case briefs:
- Written by law professors and practitioners, not other law students. 46,500 briefs, keyed to 994 casebooks. Top-notch customer support.
- The right amount of information, includes the facts, issues, rule of law, holding and reasoning, and any concurrences and dissents.
- Access in your classes, works on your mobile and tablet. Massive library of related video lessons and high quality multiple-choice questions.
- Easy to use, uniform format for every case brief. Written in plain English, not in legalese. Our briefs summarize and simplify; they don’t just repeat the court’s language.
