CA8: Six year old information for CP was still PC (staleness not mentioned)

Defendant engaged in an email exchange with the mother of his niece who was posing as the niece to talk about his molesting her six years earlier in Wisconsin, which he essentially admitted, along with having child pornography on his computer. A USMJ in South Dakota issued a search warrant for defendant’s computers in Wisconsin. After they were seized, another was issued in South Dakota to search them. There was probable cause and the good faith exception would support the warrant. The legality of the interstate warrant does not need to be decided. United States v. Houston, 665 F.3d 991 (8th Cir. 2012)*:

Here, Shawback, based on her experience, discerned a connection between child molestation and possession of child pornography. She conveyed this experience in her affidavit along with evidence that Houston acknowledged that he possessed a computer disk, a disk which one may infer likely contained child nudity and potentially pornography, based on the context of his email admission, that he took with him to Wisconsin when he molested E.L.. Based on Shawback’s affidavit, a Wisconsin judge issued a warrant to search Houston’s computers for child pornography. With this search warrant in hand, Shawback searched his computers and found child pornography. Under these facts, by excluding this evidence, we would be “[p]enalizing the officer for the magistrate’s error, rather than [her] own, [which] cannot logically contribute to the deterrence of Fourth Amendment violations.” Leon, 468 U.S. at 921.

Houston further argues that, in light of the fact that the issuing judge limited Warrant #2’s applicability to violations of Wisconsin statutes the Leon good-faith exception does not apply because no officer could reasonably believe that the computers seized in South Dakota would contain any evidence of a six-year-old violation of a Wisconsin statute. This argument presupposes that an officer would know the legal and jurisdictional limits of a judge’s power to issue interstate search warrants as well as statutory limitation periods for prosecutors. We decline to impose such a duty on officers exercising a search warrant obtained without deceit. “‘[O]nce the warrant issues, there is literally nothing more the policeman can do in seeking to comply with the law.'” Id. (quoting Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465, 498 (1976) (Burger, C.J., concurring)). After all, “[i]t is the magistrate’s responsibility to determine whether the officer’s allegations establish probable cause and, if so, to issue a warrant comporting in form with the requirements of the Fourth Amendment.” Id. “In the ordinary case, an officer cannot be expected to question the magistrate’s probable-cause determination or his judgment that the form of the warrant is technically sufficient.” Id. Here, Shawback searched Houston’s computers in Wisconsin for evidence of child pornography pursuant to a search warrant. Under these facts, we cannot say that the warrant was “‘so facially deficient’ that no police officer could reasonably presume the warrant to be valid.” Proell, 485 F.3d at 431 (internal quotations omitted). Thus, we find that Shawback conducted the search in good faith.