Police in Florida traveled to a funeral home and attempted to unlock a cellphone with a dead man’s finger as part of their investigation.
Thirty-year-old Linus Phillip was killed by a Largo police officer last month after authorities say he tried to drive away before an officer could search him.
At the funeral home, two detectives held Phillip’s hands up to the phone’s fingerprint sensor but could not unlock it.
Phillip’s fiancee Victoria Armstrong says she felt violated and disrespected by the officers' actions.
Legal experts mostly agree that what the detectives did was legal, but they question whether it was appropriate.
Charles Rose, a professor at Stetson University College of Law, tells the Tampa Bay Times that dead people can’t assert their Fourth Amendment protections because you can’t own property when you’re dead. But those rights could apply to whoever inherits the property.