“When the government seizes property incident to a lawful arrest, the Fourth Amendment requires that any continued possession of the property must be reasonable”
D.C. police arrested protesters in Adams Morgan in August 2020, charged none of them, and kept their phones for about a year. Some waited over 14 months. Five circuits say police can hold seized property indefinitely. The D.C. Circuit split from them, and the phone itself was the punishment no court ever handed down.