Can a juvenile give consent to search his phone‪?‬ The Search & Seizure Show

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Hey guys, it's Anthony Bandiero here with blue to gold law enforcement training, giving you another roadside chat. Alright, so this question comes from an officer in Kansas, and the officer asked this. So the situation was several officers stopped out with young kids that were suspected of throwing rocks from an overpass onto a car. And the officers noticed that they had cell phones, and they asked for consent to search the cell phone for evidence of them, you know, throwing rocks and so forth, they reasonably believe that if they were up to no good, they would be recording it. So a,
the kids were 1112 13, and 12. So four kids total, and a couple of my believe, offered their cell phones to be viewed and the videos looked at and so forth. So the officers got consent from the kids. They looked at the videos, they did not see anything illegal. They gave the phones back and the kids were released. Well, what happens later, mom calls, right, one of the kids mom's calls and says, You have no right to search my kids cell phone without my permission. My son cannot give you permission. That's my cell phone, I pay for it. And the officer asks, well, did my you know these officers mess up?
And the answer is no.
It is.
It is legally possible for a juvenile to consent to search. So what are the requirements of consent to search? Well, it has to be free and voluntary. In other words, the person gave consent to search freely on his or her own will. And it was voluntary. In other words, there was no
gun to the kit to the person's head, right. So that's free and voluntary. Also, the requirement is that the person has to have authority to give consent over the things searched.
These factors are judged based on a totality of the circumstances, a totality of circumstances, the whole thing comes into all the facts come into play.
And then finally, the prosecutor the burden of proof is preponderance of the evidence. That is how much proof you need to prove to the court that you had free voluntary consent. So free and voluntary consent.
The person giving consent has the authority.
And based off to the totality of circumstances, can the prosecutor prove by a preponderance of the evidence more likely than not that the consent was free, you know that those factors are met? Well, let's look at it here. Okay. So first of all, courts do not have an age cutoff. There are plenty of cases out there where juveniles are consenting to search.
The juvenile has authority over the phone, the juvenile is a user of the phone, the mom can also give consent, but they do not need to track down mom, they can get consent from somebody else who can give it the officer who shared the story said that there was no threats. There was no you know, it was it was just very calm and cordial and asked the kids to kind of prove that there weren't anything by showing the videos. So there is no threats, there is no harassment.
And this is there is no facts given to me at least, that would show that the cops cannot prove that the kids the kid gave free and voluntary consent. Mom's consent is not required.
They can get it if they want, but it's not required. So based off of this question, we are good to go. This is a valid consent. And if the officers would have found evidence on the phone, not only would we be good, but the officer presents convinced sees the phone as evidence to be used at trial.
There you go. Keep your questions coming. I can't answer all the questions, but ones that I believe other officers like know the answer, I will share them on this YouTube format. Until next time, stay safe