CA7: SW for computers with CP on premises permitted search of hard drive found hidden in def’s mother’s car

Officers had a search warrant for child pornography on computer devices on the premises, and the search warrant named the premises and one vehicle. At the time of execution of the warrant, defendant’s mother was there with her car, and the hard drive they were looking for was hidden in her car. She consented to entry into her car to retrieve it. The warrant covered the hard drive, even though it was hidden in her car. United States v. Borostowski, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 24661 (7th Cir. December 31, 2014):

If Dollie’s car had not been parked on the premises, we might be faced with a different analysis of whether the hard drive’s contents were within the scope of the first warrant. But the circumstances here are no different than if Borostowski had hidden the hard drive in his mother’s locked jewelry box in her bedroom within the house, for example, and his mother consented to a search of her jewelry box. Borostowski could have no serious claim that a hard drive found in the jewelry box would have been beyond the scope of the warrant. Nor could he have claimed that the agents could not search a hard drive that had simply been found sitting on the driveway, which was clearly part of the premises. That the closed container in which the device was found was a car does not necessitate a special analysis. In United States v. Evans, 92 F.3d 540, 543 (7th Cir. 1996), we concluded that “a car parked in a garage is just another interior container, like a closet or a desk.” When the police possessed a warrant to search a garage for drugs, we noted that the ownership of a car within the garage did not play into the lawfulness of the search of the car “unless it obviously belonged to someone wholly uninvolved in the criminal activities going on in the house.” Evans, 92 F.3d at 543-44. Such was the case here where the agents knew that the car belonged to someone wholly uninvolved in the criminal activities going on in the house, namely Dollie. But Dollie’s consent allowed the agents to open the car and the warrant allowed them to examine the contents of the device found within the car. In short, the car was on the premises, Dollie’s consent allowed a search of the car, and the first warrant allowed the search of any digital media discovered on the premises. The district court was therefore correct in declining to suppress the contents of the hard drive.