Experts on search and seizure law who have argued in front of the U.S. Supreme Court said Thursday that they believe the Baltimore City state?s attorney should not have dropped first-degree murder charges against a teenager accused of gunning down two Carroll County residents.
“I can?t believe that the charges would be dropped,” said University of Baltimore law professor Byron Warnken, who argued a Fourth Amendment case in front of the high court in 1996. “If I was a prosecutor, I would go forward with it.”
After deciding the police?s search of Davon David Temple?s cell phone was illegal, prosecutors Wednesday dismissed murder charges against Temple, 17, of Baltimore, who was accused of killing Jason Woycio, 29, of Westminster, and Jennifer Morelock, 25, of New Windsor. Morelock was five months pregnant when she was killed.
Temple was arrested after police found a text message sent from his cell phone that read: “I killed 2 white people around my way 2day & 1 of them was a woman.”
Prosecutors said Temple allowed police to search his cell phone, butpolice did not have the right to search his text messages.
Nancy Forster, public defender for the State of Maryland, agreed with Warnken.
“There is no case law that I know of that deals specifically with text messaging,” said Forster, who argued before the nation?s high court in 2002.
“If you have the cell phone consensually, you can look at anything in the cell phone. Unless the defendant gave a specific consent, and said, ?You can look at this part of my cell phone, but not that,? the police have carte blanche once he lets them look at it.”
Columbia lawyer Clarke Ahlers said prosecutors should have gone ahead with the case.
“If I was the state?s attorney, I would have argued that if you have consent to look for the names of gang members in the cell phone, that means the entire cell phone, including the text messages,” he said.
Joseph Sviatko, a Baltimore City state?s attorney spokesman, said the office believed the search of the cell phone would have been declared illegal by the judge.
Still, that doesn?t mean Temple is off the hook, Sviatko said.
“The case is still open and under investigation,” he said. “Just because we dismissed the charges, it doesn?t mean that Mr. Temple is exonerated.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
