New Mexico Law Enforcement Personal Cell Phone Records

 Now, support of the judge’s action recently by the New Mexico Court of Appeals potentially raises a question for every officer in the country: to what extent are records from your personal cell phone subject to public review in a criminal trial if you carry the phone with you on duty?

After weeks of wrangling, Judge Stephen Pfeffer in the end agreed that the defense “had a right to access the requested information even without knowing whether any such information existed.” He did attach limitations. Only Boerth’s cell phone records during the controversial six-minute “missing footage” gap in his dash-cam recording would be subject to review. This apparently was the time the defense considered most likely that the alleged C.I. call occurred. And the State could request that the judge first inspect the records alone in his chambers to determine if they included “personal matters irrelevant to the case.”

With those conditions, he ordered Bevacqua-Young to produce Boerth’s cell phone records. The officer was “an arm of the State,” the court ruled, and therefore his private phone records were “within the possession, custody, or control of the State, making them subject to disclosure.” Still, the prosecutor steadfastly refused to order Boerth to surrender them. Read more

Location Oakland, Ca - Private Investigator