United States v. Borostowski, No. 13-3811 (7th Cir. 2014)
Annotate this CaseBorostowski pled guilty to receiving child pornography, five counts of distributing child pornography, and three counts of possessing child pornography, reserving his right to appeal denial of motions to suppress. The district court sentenced him to 293 months of imprisonment. On appeal, Borostowski challenged findings that he was not in custody when officers questioned him on the day a search warrant was executed at his home, and that a hard drive seized from his mother’s car was within the scope of the warrant. The Seventh Circuit remanded the issues of whether Borostowski was in custody during his interrogation and when he invoked his right to counsel. A reasonable person in Borostowski’s circumstances might not have felt free to end the interview and leave, given the strong police presence, the use of handcuffs and a de facto two-man guard as restraints, the extended length of interrogation, and confinement to a small crowded room, despite being told that he was not under arrest or in custody and that the tone never became hostile or combative. The court affirmed with respect to the contents of the hard drive retrieved from the car and found no plain error in the procedure used in sentencing.
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