Criminal's iPhone "Unlocked" for a Court Case

A court case recently took place in which a man was arrested and his phone confiscated. Part of the evidence for the case was information stored on his phone. They "cloned" the data on this iPhone to some other device and were able to access all of his iMessages, app data, and possibly more. How would they be able to do this when Apple says that even themselves aren't able to. (Not that I completely believe them) How can you …

case court criminal iphone privacy