United States v. Suing, No. 12-2885 (8th Cir. 2013)
Annotate this CaseDefendant pled guilty to one count of producing and manufacturing child pornography, preserving his right to appeal the district court's denial of his motion to suppress evidence discovered in the searches of his vehicle and residence. Defendant filed a motion to suppress the evidence found during and following an Arizona traffic stop, in part claiming the execution of the search warrant for the external hard drive found in his vehicle violated the Fourth Amendment. Defendant also challenged the execution of the federal search warrants for his Omaha apartment, in part claiming those search warrants were tainted by the information from the allegedly unlawful Arizona search. The court concluded that the law enforcement officer did not exceed the scope of defendant's consent when searching the vehicle for drug activity. Having concluded that the Arizona child pornography search did not violate the Fourth Amendment, the court rejected defendant's claim that the illegality of the Arizona search tainted the Omaha search warrant affidavit. Accordingly, the court held the searches did not violate the Fourth Amendment and affirmed the conviction.
Court Description: Criminal case - Criminal law. Search of defendant's computer did not exceed the scope of his consent where defendant consented to a search of his vehicle for evidence of drug trafficking and the Arizona officer discovered child pornography when he started defendant's computer to look for drug ledgers or other evidence of trafficking, immediately halted his search upon seeing the images and obtained a warrant authoring a search for child pornography; since the Arizona search was lawful, it provided a valid basis for the issuance of a warrant in Nebraska to search defendant's residence; defendant had no expectation of privacy in his Internet subscriber information when he used a peer-to-peer network to share child pornography.
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