Police Enter Funeral Home - Use Dead Man's Fingerprint to Unlock Phone

Largo, Florida police detectives entered a funeral home in Clearwater and attempted to unlock the phone of the late Linus F. Phillip, a man killed in March by another officer at a traffic stop, using the deceased man’s hands.

Victoria Armstrong, the fiancé of Phillip, said she felt "so disrespected and violated" after police entered the funeral home she was present at and attempted to use Phillip’s corpse to unlock the device. While the police may not have been violating the law by doing so, Phillip’s family certainly felt the move was disrespectful:

Ms. Armstrong, 28, happened to be at Sylvan Abbey Funeral Home in Clearwater the day two detectives showed up with Phillip’s phone, she said. They were taken to Phillip’s corpse. Then, they tried to unlock the phone by holding the body’s hands up to the phone’s fingerprint sensor.

Police Lt. Randall Chaney said it was an unsuccessful attempt to access and preserve data on the phone to aid in the investigation into Phillip’s death and a separate inquiry into drugs that involved Phillip, 30. While Chaney said detectives didn’t think they’d need a warrant because there is no expectation of privacy after death - an opinion several legal experts affirmed - the actions didn’t sit right with Phillip’s family.

It’s not clear from the report what kind of phone Phillip owned, but if it was an iPhone, the 48-hour window in which the device could be unlocked with a fingerprint alone would have long expired.

It’s unconstitutional for police to search cell-phones without a warrant, and living criminal suspects can cite Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination if police demand to know the password to a phone. But courts have ruled the Fifth Amendment protections do not apply to devices with fingerprint-based security on the legal understanding that fingerprints are like other kinds of biometric indicators such as DNA or handwriting samples.

Florida police used a dead man’s finger in attempt to access his phone. It’s legal, but is it right? (Tampa Bay Times, April 22, 2018)