Police Follow-Up Search of Laptop By Private Party OK

US v. Fall: Fall’s niece and her boyfriend were staying with him when they discovered what appeared to be child pornography on one of Fall’s laptops. They took the laptop to police, who looked at a few of the thumbnails and concluded that the images were child pornography. After Fall invoked his right to remain silent the police obtains warrants to search the laptop and Fall’s home. The warrant affidavit included the information police learned from their initial review of the laptop as well as information from a neighbor that, while police were securing Fall’s home prior to executing the warrant, the neighbor saw Fall crawl out a second-story roof, try to throw something away, and flee. In truth, the neighbor could not identify the man they saw. The execution of the warrants uncovered additional child pornography. Fall unsuccessfully moved to suppress the evidence seized by the police and was convicted at trial of three counts of receipt of child pornography, two counts of possession, and one count of transportation.

On appeal, the Fourth Circuit affirmed Fall’s conviction, addressing several issues related to child pornography cases along the way. First, the court concluded that the district court did not err in denying Fall’s motion to suppress. The court sidestepped Fall’s argument that the initial police search of the laptop was broader than the private search done by Fall’s niece and boyfriend. After noting a circuit split on how the private search doctrine applied to computer evidence, the court eventually concluded that Fall failed under the good faith exception, since the search warrant was not “facially deficient,” even with the evidence that might have exceeded the scope of the private search was excised. The same was true of the false statement about what the neighbor saw. Second, the court rejected Fall’s argument that his possession count was multiplicitous of the three receipt counts, holding that the charged offenses occurred at different times (months apart). Third, the court concluded that there was sufficient evidence to sustain Fall’s conviction for transportation of child pornography even though the evidence only showed that he moved the file from his laptop to an online cloud storage account. In doing so, the court distinguished transportation and distribution, which requires a recipient. Finally, the court concluded there was sufficient evidence to sustain Fall’s receipt counts, even though the images involved were found in temporary internet files.