United States v. Scott, No. 17-1666 (7th Cir. 2018)
Annotate this CaseWisconsin officials arrested Scott for attempting to have sexual relations with a boy who Scott (age 58) believed was 14 years old. The “boy” was a state Department of Justice agent, impersonating a teenager in response to an ad that Scott placed on Craigslist. Scott sent Kyle sexually explicit emails and sexually graphic photos and asked Kyle to reciprocate. Executing the warrant issued by a state judge, agents found child pornography in Scott's home. A federal judge denied a motion to suppress and sentenced Scott to 178 months in prison; he had an 11-year state sentence. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. The decision of the judge who issued the warrant receives “great deference”. Scott offered to host a sexual encounter and sent Kyle a picture of a man on a bedspread; it does not stretch credulity to infer that the picture had been taken at Scott’s home and that other pictures also could be found there. Many cell phones are set up to transmit the pictures they take to home computers, which have larger screens and access to file-sharing software. Scott argued that there is no reason to think that pedophiles create or acquire child pornography but Scott asked Kyle to send a picture of himself with an erection. The state judge did not exceed the bounds of “great deference.”
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