State v. Gould
Annotate this CaseA jury convicted Dennis Gould of rape, gross sexual imposition, pandering sexually oriented material involving a minor, and illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material, all based on images located on the hard drive of Gould's computer. The court of appeals reversed the convictions, holding that the trial court should have excluded all evidence that resulted from the warrantless search of Gould's hard drive. The Supreme Court reversed the decision of the court of appeals and reinstated the judgment of conviction and sentence entered by the trial court, holding (1) because Gould had abandoned the hard drive, Gould did not have an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in the hard drive; and (2) therefore, the warrantless search did not violate the Fourth Amendment.
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