A good question. The phone was password protected, and the “judge” is wrong, a 4- or 7-year-old can’t just defeat the password. The state’s team of experts couldn’t get it in a year. It’s reasonable to assume the messages were from St. Skittles. It wouldn’t take many checks of the text records to verify the authenticity of the record. But they’re only going to be allowed a few hours to do it because a sequestered jury is waiting.
The phone was password protected, then a third party app. with a unique password and database, was used for the incriminating messaging. This left the less damning messaging to be perused by whoever he was compelled to allow access to because of recent legal issues.