United States v. Hill, No. 13-1884 (8th Cir. 2014)
Annotate this CaseDefendant appealed his conviction for knowingly receiving and distributing child pornography (Count 1) and knowingly possessing child pornography (Count 2). The court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion or otherwise err in denying defendant's motion to suppress without a hearing where defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in such publicly shared files (LimeWare file-sharing software) and could not invoke the protections of the Fourth Amendment; because the jury specifically found defendant guilty based on different facts and images for each count, the jury did not convict defendant of receiving and distributing the same images that he was also found to have possessed, and thus no double jeopardy violation occurred; and the evidence was sufficient to convict defendant of both counts. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court.
Court Description: Criminal case - Criminal law. A defendant has no reasonable expectation of privacy in files retrieved from his personal computer where he admittedly installed and used LimeWire to make the files accessible to others for file sharing; the files and depictions covered by each count were different and since the two counts were not based on the same act or transactions, defendant's convictions on both counts did not constitute double jeopardy; evidence was sufficient to support defendant's convictions for receiving, distributing and possessing child pornography.
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