NEUBAUER, C.J.
¶ 1 Ryan Tentoni asserts a privacy interest in text messages sent by him and discovered through a warrantless search of Wayne Wilson's phone. Tentoni seeks suppression of the text messages and other subsequently obtained phone records as fruit of the government's illegal search of his text messages stored in Wilson's phone. Tentoni does not have an objectively
¶ 2 At the preliminary hearing, Delafield police officer Landon Nyren testified that on December 5, 2012, he responded to a call about a death and found the body of Wayne Wilson. Wilson had a small plastic object in his mouth, which turned out to be a fentanyl patch. The Waukesha County Medical Examiner testified that fentanyl was a substantial factor in Wilson's death and was the immediate cause of his death. On the autopsy report, the examiner listed acute fentanyl intoxication as the cause of death.
¶ 3 Nyren testified that, while at Wilson's residence, he found Wilson's phone and retrieved text messages from it, including texts sent and received the day before Wilson's death. There were messages between Wilson and Tentoni discussing Tentoni obtaining fentanyl patches for Wilson. After Wilson sent Tentoni a message indicating the some patches "are like duds to me" and that he did not "feel a thing," there was a text from Tentoni to Wilson suggesting that Wilson suck on a patch. A subsequent message from Tentoni to Wilson described how to fold the patch, and Nyren testified that the folding method described in the text was consistent with the position of the patch on Wilson's body when he was found.
¶ 4 Tentoni's counsel represented to the court, at the hearing on his motion to suppress, that, relying on the information contained in the text messages on Wilson's phone from Tentoni, Nyren obtained a warrant for Tentoni's phone records relating to the number he used to text Wilson, including 350 text messages between Tentoni and Wilson in the month of November and into the first week of December and around four thousand text messages in all.
¶ 5 Tentoni moved to suppress the text messages found on Wilson's phone and those obtained with the warrant. The circuit court denied the motion, finding that Tentoni had not made a showing of a reasonable expectation of privacy in information that he sent to Wilson. Tentoni pleaded guilty to an amended charge of second-degree reckless homicide, was convicted, and now appeals.
¶ 6 On review of a circuit court's decision on a motion to suppress, we uphold the circuit court's findings of fact unless they are clearly erroneous. See State v. Richardson, 156 Wis.2d 128, 137, 456 N.W.2d 830 (1990). Whether these facts demonstrate that constitutional principles have been complied with is a question of law we review de novo. Id. at 137-38, 456 N.W.2d 830.
¶ 7 "The Fourth Amendment provides that `people [are] to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures... and [that] no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause....'" State v. Martwick, 2000 WI 5, ¶26, 231 Wis.2d 801, 604 N.W.2d 552 (quoting U.S. CONST. amend. IV; alteration in original); see also
Id., ¶ 36. These factors are not controlling, and the list is not exclusive. State v. Guard, 2012 WI App 8, ¶ 17, 338 Wis.2d 385, 808 N.W.2d 718 (2011). Whether an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy is determined by examining the totality of the circumstances. Id.
¶ 8 Addressing the factors applicable to this case, we conclude that under the totality of circumstances Tentoni did not have an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in text messages contained in Wilson's phone.
¶ 9 Looking to other jurisdictions, it is widely accepted that the sender of a letter has no privacy interest in the contents of that letter once it reaches the recipient. See United States v. Dunning, 312 F.3d 528, 531 (1st Cir.2002); WAYNE R. LAFAVE, 6 SEARCH AND SEIZURE: A TREATISE ON THE FOURTH AMENDMENT § 11.3(f), at 293-95 & n. 441 (5th ed. 2012) ("The standing of the sender, to the extent it is based solely upon the fact of his being the sender, terminates once delivery of the goods has been made."). The same analysis has been applied to e-mails and texts. See Guest v. Leis, 255 F.3d 325, 333 (6th Cir.2001) (noting that a computer user "would lose a legitimate expectation of privacy in an e-mail that had already reached its recipient; at this moment, the e-mailer would be analogous to a letter-writer, whose `expectation of privacy ordinarily terminates upon delivery' of the letter") (citation omitted); State v. Patino, 93 A.3d 40, 56 (R.I. 2014) ("Because the recipient now shares full control of whether to share or disseminate the sender's message, the sender, to be sure, no longer enjoys a reasonable expectation of privacy in the digital copy of the message contained on the recipient's device."); see also United States v. Jones, 149 Fed.Appx. 954, 959 (11th Cir.2005) (defendant did not have reasonable expectation of privacy in text messages contained in his coconspirator's pager); Fetsch v. City of Roseburg, No. 6:11-cv-6343-TC, 2012 WL 6742665, at *10 (D.Or. Dec. 31, 2012) (no reasonable expectation of privacy in text messages displayed on third party's phone); Hampton v. State, 295 Ga. 665, 763 S.E.2d 467, 471 (2014) (no reasonable expectation of privacy in text messages where defendant could not show that phone belonged to him); State v. Griffin, 834 N.W.2d 688, 696-97 (Minn.2013) (defendant did not have reasonable expectation of privacy in cell phone records because he was not the subscriber); State v. Carle, 266 Or.App. 102, 337 P.3d 904, 910-11 (2014) (defendant did not have reasonable expectation of privacy in text messages sent to someone else's cell phone).
¶ 11 Here, Tentoni neither exerted nor maintained any control over Wilson's phone or the copies of text messages that he had sent to Wilson and were stored in Wilson's phone. Tentoni presented no evidence that he could access the copies of the texts he sent to Wilson or control the content of Wilson's phone in any way. Once Tentoni sent the messages to Wilson and Wilson received them, Tentoni had no control over whether Wilson saved them, deleted them, forwarded them to others or shared their content in any way. This lack of control over the message once it reaches the recipient is analogous to the lack of control a sender has over a piece of mail or e-mail once it reaches the recipient, where it may be saved, destroyed or deleted, shared, or disclosed to others. This lack of control over what is done with the text message and lack of any right to exclude others from reading it are key in the determination that Tentoni did not have an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in the text messages stored in Wilson's phone.
¶ 12 Tentoni had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the text messages stored in Wilson's cell phone. We uphold the circuit court's decision on the motion to suppress and affirm the conviction.
Judgment affirmed.