United States v. Thomas, No. 14-14680 (11th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CaseDefendant, convicted of knowingly accessing with intent to view child pornography, challenged the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress evidence discovered on an HP desktop computer in his home. The court concluded that defendant's then-wife, Caroline Olausen, had authority to consent to the forensic search of the shared HP computer in her home, and thus there was no Fourth Amendment violation when the detective conducted the OS Triage forensic scan based on Olausen’s consent; even assuming arguendo that Georgia v. Randolph applied to the search, there was no Fourth Amendment violation because the officers stopped their search when defendant seemed to object; and the only information the detective relied on in obtaining the search warrant was data collected prior to defendant’s objection. Therefore, the court held that all of the fruits of the search following the issuance of the warrant were admissible. Furthermore, law enforcement would have sought the search warrant even without the fruits of the allegedly illegal forensic search, and the evidence ultimately obtained pursuant to the warrant was admissible under the independent source doctrine. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment.
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