The following excerpt is from United States v. Lucas, 18cr4224, 21cv937-CAB (S.D. Cal. 2021):
Lucas argues that his counsel was ineffective because he did not move to suppress evidence collected from Lucas's personal mobile phone. [Doc. No. 119 at 4.] Lucas contends the police forced him to unlock his phone with his thumb in violation of his Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights and that the evidence should have been suppressed. [Id.] The law concerning the constitutionality of compelled use of biometric information to unlock mobile phones, however, is far from settled today, and was even more unsettled at the time Lucas was arrested. See In re Search Warrant No. 5165, 470 F.Supp.3d 715, 720, 725-26 (E.D. Ky. 2020) (noting that the question of what, if anything, is required of the United States under the Fourth Amendment to compel any individual, whether a target or bystander, to provide biometrics incident to the execution of a search warrant for electronic devices . . . is emerging and entirely unsettled, and that [f]ew courts-none of them federal appellate courts-have addressed [whether] the Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination applies to compulsory biometric authentication.). In light of the lack of clarity in the law, combined with the other evidence against Lucas, Lucas' counsel's decision not to file a motion to suppress evidence taken from Lucas's mobile phone was not unreasonable. See United States v. Glover, 872 F.3d 625, 633 (D.C. Cir. 2017) (holding that the inquiry for deficient performance of counsel looks at performance as of the time of counsel's conduct' and accordingly does not require counsel to propound vanguard arguments to meet the bare minimum required by the Sixth Amendment.) (citing Maryland v. Kulbicki, 477 U.S. 1, 5 (2015)).
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