[plain talk]

That being said, Apple may have possession of the back-up data from that iPhone stored in the shooter's iCloud account.

That's exactly right. The search warrant is on the IPhone account and not the iPhone. Apple has the data in the cloud and should provide it based on a legal search warrant.

[itsahoot]

Apple has the data in the cloud and should provide it based on a legal search warrant.

This may come as a shock but not everyone backs up to the cloud since Apple only gives 5 meg of free space and iPhones now come in 256 meg configuration.

Apple or for that matter no one can give what they don't have. I think that may be on purpose.