For the reasons set forth in this Decision, this Court holds that the Defendant has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his text messages and in the apartment where the subject cell phones were searched and seized so as to grant him standing, under the Fourth Amendment, to challenge the legality of the searches and seizures of those phones and their contents by the police.

Based on the tsunami of illegal evidence collected by the Cranston Police Department, this Court grants Defendant‘s suppression motions and excludes the State‘s core evidence from being used at trial, including the text messages, all cell phones and their contents, all cell phone records, and critical portions of the Defendant‘s videotaped statement and his written statement given to the police.

In addition, this Court finds that the Defendant made a preliminary showing that numerous sworn statements made by police officers in a dozen warrant affidavits were either deliberately false or made in reckless disregard of the truth so as to entitle him to a Franks hearing subject to further argument on additional preliminary issues.

The judge found standing to challenge the seizure of the text messages even though the defendant may not have had standing to challenge the search of the phone itself -- his privacy interest in the text messages stored on the phone was enough.

The opinion has some interesting statistics.

Law enforcement agencies made 1.3 million requests for consumer phone information—including text messages—from the nine largest cellular carriers in 2011. Press Release, Congressman Ed Markey, Markey: Law Enforcement Collecting Information on Millions of Americans from Mobile Phone Carriers (on congressman‘s website) [hereinafter Markey Congressional Inquiry]

• 83% of American adults—4 of 5 people—own a cell phone. Pew Research Center,