A computer repair technician was recognized in a 2-1 decision by the Eighth Circuit to be able to distinguish between child porn and non-child porn [sub silentio recognizing “I know it when I see it.”]. The computer tech was a neutral third party to report for inclusion in an affidavit. United States v. Grant, 06-3649 (8th Cir. July 13, 2007). The affidavit stated in part:
Eng summarized the information he had gathered from Sundstrom, specifically pointing out that Sundstrom had told him that “Lewis had been a Computer technician for a long time and ha[d] worked on several home computer[s]” and that Lewis had “found pornography on several computers but believe[d] that what he found on the [Grants’] computer to be child pornography.”
The court found:
We agree with the District Court that Lewis, by virtue of his experience as a computer repairman, was “uniquely able, and properly motivated, to distinguish between child pornography and lawful images.” Mem. & Order, May 24, 2006, at 20. Sundstrom emphasized to Eng that the images Lewis stated that he had observed on the Grants’ computer were disturbing and unlike any pornographic images Lewis had observed on computers in the past. Lewis distinguished between “adult” and “child” pornography and specifically characterized the images on the Grants’ computer as child pornography. See e.g., United States v. Koelling, 992 F.2d 817, 822 (8th Cir. 1993) (“Most minors look like minors and most adults look like adults ….”). Eng’s affidavit in support of the search warrant related each of these facts to Judge Turnbull, and we conclude that the affidavit was sufficient to establish probable cause for the issuance of the search warrant.
Thus, the affidavit was not bare bones and the good faith exception would save it anyway.
Judge Arnold in dissent found the computer tech’s information merely conclusory and insufficient to support issuance of the warrant or the good faith exception:
The affidavit in this case provides no detail with respect to what Mr. Lewis actually saw. The only information in the affidavit about the images is as follows: “Sundstrom advised Lewis had been a Computer technician for a long time and has worked on several home computer processing units. Sundstrom advised Lewis has found pornography on several computers but believes that what he found on the Grant’s [sic] computer to be child pornography.” The sum of this information is insufficient to support the issuance of a search warrant because it is too conclusory and because it is hearsay.
I am unable to join the court’s assertion that Mr. Lewis was uniquely able to distinguish between child pornography and lawful images due to his experience as a computer repairman. We have no information whatever to indicate that Mr. Lewis had any expertise in what constitutes child pornography.
Comment: When you read the affidavit for the search warrant, the first issue that jumps out at you is the conclusory nature of the information in the affidavit which is rubberstamped by the district court and court of appeals as sufficient to show probable cause. There is no description at all of what was seen. Judge Arnold has the better argument here, but, being a practitioner in the Eighth Circuit, I know that rehearing en banc is not going to happen.
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"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." —Me
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well." –Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others)
“I am still learning.” —Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)).
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848)
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced." —Williams v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold, J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence." —Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater than it is today." — Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property." —Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth Amendment." —United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth." —Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable." —Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected." —Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” —United States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.” —United States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)
"You can't always get what you want / But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need." —Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, Let it Bleed (album, 1969)
"In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration camp]
“Children grow up thinking the adult world is ordered, rational, fit for purpose. It’s crap. Becoming a man is realising that it’s all rotten. Realising how to celebrate that rottenness, that’s freedom.” – John le Carré, The Night Manager (1993), line by Richard Roper
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime." —Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948)
The book was dedicated in the first (1982) and sixth (2025) editions to Justin William Hall (1975-2025). He was three when this project started in 1978.
