{"id":5799,"date":"2012-02-08T06:18:21","date_gmt":"2011-07-18T07:23:28","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-07-18T07:23:28","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=5799","title":{"rendered":"CA4: Prosecution for destruction of hard drive did not interfere with property rights"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Defendant was charged with destruction of evidence for destroying the hard drive of his computer when he learned federal investigators wanted to look at it in a child pornography investigation. His prosecution was not a Fourth Amendment violation for interference with his property rights since he had no property rights in child pornography as contraband. <a href=\"http:\/\/pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov\/opinion.pdf\/104767.U.pdf\">United States v. Hicks<\/a>, 438 Fed. Appx. 216 (4th Cir. 2011)*:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Fourth Amendment protects individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, houses, papers and effects. Soldal v. Cook County, 506 U.S. 56, 62 (1992). The seizure of personal property occurs when \u201cthere is some meaningful interference with an individual&#8217;s possessory interests in that property.\u201d Altman v. City of High Point, 330 F.3d 194, 204 (4th Cir. 2003) (quoting United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113 (1984)). We hold that there was no meaningful interference with Hicks&#8217;s possessory interests because he  did not have a property right in the images of child pornography. See Helton v. Hunt, 330 F.3d 242, 247 (4th Cir. 2003). Therefore, the district court did not err in convicting Hicks under \u00a7 1519.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Retaliatory prosecution alleged to be in violation of First Amendment is not governed by the arguable probable cause standard of the Fourth Amendment: \u201cAccordingly, we address this argument on its merits and conclude that arguable probable cause does not apply to a First Amendment retaliatory inducement to prosecution case because probable cause is not an element of the First Amendment right allegedly violated.\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cadc.uscourts.gov\/internet\/opinions.nsf\/DCD6F85DA312BDF7852578CE004FE463\/$file\/10-5334-1318819.pdf\">Moore v. Hartman<\/a>, 396 U.S. App. D.C. 28, 644 F.3d 415 (2011).*<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>b2evALnk.b2WPAutP <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=5799\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5799\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}