6th Circuit: When govt gets a warrant to search a cellphone in govt custody, and warrant says search must be executed in X days, the warrant is executed for law's purposes when phone sent to forensic lab for analysis. A brief thread on this. opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/1… 
The problem here is that computer searches ordinarily happen in two stages: 1st, the officers go to place where computers are, take them away (the physical search stage); 2nd, a computer forensic guy images device and searches image for evidence (the electronic search stage).
The 2009 Rule 41 Amendment on computer searches recognized this dynamic -- fueled in part, I have some reason to think, by a 2005 law review article of mine -- by clarifying that the date of execution in the warrant referred to the 1st physical search stage, not the 2nd stage.
But that leaves a puzzle: What should the warrant say that when the device to be searched is already in government custody? The old warrant framework is a slightly odd fit, like with describing the "place" to be searched.
This case implicates one of those puzzles: If Rule 41 is drafted for the two-stage warrant process, & a search of an already-seized device is only one stage, with the 1st stage already having occurred w/o a warrant, what do you do if the rule is focused on the needs of 1st stage?
In that situation, the Rule says the warrant needs to focus on a stage that, in this case, has already occurred. Kind of a weird situation: What does the requirement mean?
I suppose the court's answer that sending off the phone to the forensics folks is the key is as good as any, but it feels formalistic because the substance has been fulfilled before the warrant was obtained. (BTW, all comments here re Rule 41 solely in my personal capacity.)
