Summary
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held that a seven-month delay between the uploading of a child pornography image to Skype and the application for a search warrant did not render the warrant affidavit stale. The court concluded that the intentional uploading of the image to a file-sharing and communication service supported an inference that the user possessed and was likely to retain child pornography on a computer or digital storage device. The court affirmed the denial of the motion to suppress.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether the information in the search-warrant affidavit was too stale, under the Fourth Amendment and art. 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, to establish probable cause that evidence of child pornography would be found on the defendant's computers or digital storage devices seven months after an image was uploaded.
- Whether an intentional upload of a child-pornography image to a communication and file-sharing service supported an inference that the user was interested in and likely to retain child pornography, sufficient to overcome the passage of seven months.
Holdings
- The information was not stale and established probable cause to search the defendant's laptop and electronic storage devices for evidence of child pornography.
- No bright-line time limit governs; the staleness inquiry remains context-specific, and the collector inference is available only when the affidavit contains circumstances showing that the suspect intentionally sought out, possessed, or distributed child pornography.
Key quotations
“Because of the highly fact-intensive nature of the inquiry, it is not possible to formulate a bright-line test for staleness.” (486 Mass. at 10)
“This does not mean that a person accused of possessing or disseminating child pornography is, in effect, precluded from challenging a search warrant on the grounds of staleness because of a de facto presumption.” (486 Mass. at 15-16)
“We are persuaded that this distinction is critical and adopt this important qualification on the inferences that can be drawn in cases involving child pornography with respect to the length of time that an image containing child pornography is likely to be retained in an individual's computer or other electronic device.” (486 Mass. at 16)
Factual background
An unknown user uploaded an image of child pornography to Skype from an IP address associated with the defendant's home and his wife's Internet account. Approximately seven months later, a State police trooper obtained a warrant to search computers and digital storage devices in the home, relying on the intentional nature of the upload, Skype's file-sharing function, and generalized information that child-pornography images are often retained or recoverable for extended periods. The search seized the defendant's laptop and flash drive, both of which contained child-pornography images.
Procedural history
A Middlesex County grand jury returned two indictments on February 15, 2018. A Superior Court judge denied the defendant's motion to suppress, concluding that the seven-month delay between the uploading of a child-pornography image and the warrant application was tolerable and did not render the information stale. The defendant entered conditional guilty pleas, appealed, and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court granted direct appellate review.