State v. McDonnell
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The Supreme Court held that Defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy in data contained on his hard drive and that the government conducted an unreasonable search by examining data without any authority to do so either by a warrant or an exception to the warrant requirement.
At issue was whether the consensual creation of a copy of the hard drive of Defendant's seized laptop computer permanently eliminated Defendant's privacy interest in the hard drive. The circuit court denied Defendant's motion to suppress and ultimately convicted him of three counts of distribution of child pornography. The appellate court reversed, concluding that individuals have a legitimate expectation of privacy in the digital data within their computer and that Defendant's revocation of his consent to examine the data from his laptop precluded a forensic examination of the mirror-image copy of its hard drive without a warrant. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the search in this case was unreasonable after Defendant withdrew his consent.
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