I'm getting ready to teach a session at the Superior Court Judges' Conference about searches of computers and other electronic devices, so I've been reading all the computer search cases I can get my hands on. Recently, I stumbled on United States v. Crespo-Rios, __ F. Supp. 2d __, 2009 WL 1595463 (D. Puerto Rico June 5, 2009), which I found pretty remarkable. The defendant engaged in sexually explicit online chats with a police officer posing as a 12-year-old, and sent her "obscene material" via webcam. Based on that, a judge issued a search warrant authorizing a search of the defendant's computers for "any and all chat logs, child pornography, child erotica, information pertaining to sexual interest in children, [and] images depicting sexual contact between adults and minors." The police executed the warrant and found child pornography, leading to federal charges against the defendant. The defendant moved to suppress, admitting that there was probable cause to search for evidence of solicitation of a minor and for evidence of distributing obscene materials to a minor, but arguing that there was no probable cause to search for child pornography, and that the warrant was therefore overbroad. The court agreed, finding no "nexus" between solicitation of a minor and the possession of child pornography. Furthermore, although the judge determined that the warrant would have been valid without the child pornography language, and that a search under such a warrant would still have revealed the child pornography, the court nonetheless declined to apply the inevitable [...]
Faculty Coordinators
