Case Summaries--Fourth Circuit Decisions (August 2019)

This post summarizes decisions published during August 2019 by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that are of interest to state practitioners. (1) Single click of website link close in time to when the link was posted supported probable cause under the totality of circumstances; (2) Information supporting search warrant was not stale; (3) Officers were entitled to good-faith reliance on the warrant U.S. v. Bosyk, 933 F.3d 319 (Aug. 1, 2019). In this child pornography case from the Eastern District of Virginia, the issue was whether a single click on a website link from the defendant’s IP address supported probable cause for a search warrant of the defendant’s home. Affirming the trial court, the Fourth Circuit held that probable cause existed and rejected the defendant’s other challenges to the search warrant. Homeland Security was investigating “Bulletin Board A,” a dark web message board where users would share child pornography, in September of 2015. A post appeared on the site describing several child pornography videos, with multiple “video thumbnail images” showing minors engaged in sex acts. Underneath those images was a link to more child pornography, including video of sexual abuse of a toddler. The post provided a password to be used to access the material at the link. The link itself was random assortment of numbers and characters that did not indicate the content found at the link (but again, the link was posted underneath descriptions and images clearly denoting illegal pornographic content). The actual videos and images at the [...]