Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-15-01192/USCOURTS-ca7-15-01192-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Roger Aleshire
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 15-1192

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

ROGER ALESHIRE,

Defendant-Appellant.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Western District of Wisconsin.

No. 14-cr-79-jdp — James D. Peterson, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED JUNE 2, 2015 — DECIDED JUNE 5, 2015

____________________

Before POSNER, EASTERBROOK, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. After a sleepover at the 

house of Roger Aleshire, a nine-year-old girl reported to her 

mother having a “dream” that Aleshire had pulled down her 

pajama bottoms and photographed her “privates”. Her

mother called the police. Aleshire admitted entering the 

room where the girls (including Aleshire’s daughter) were 

sleeping, but he denied moving or removing any girl’s clothing; instead, Aleshire maintained, he was searching for his 

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daughter’s headphones. A state judge issued a search warrant. After executing that warrant the police found child 

pornography, which Aleshire had created. He pleaded guilty 

to violating 18 U.S.C. §2251 but, with the consent of the 

prosecutor and the judge, reserved an opportunity to contest 

on appeal the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress the evidence found in the search. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 

11(a)(2). His sentence, which he does not contest, is 300 

months’ imprisonment.

His argument is simple: Probable cause depends on facts 

rather than dreams. Aleshire insists that because the girl 

called her memory a “dream” it must have been a dream. If 

it was a dream, the Fourth Amendment did not allow a 

search. But the district judge concluded that probable cause 

exists because the girl’s use of “dream” may have been a euphemism selected because she was uncomfortable describing the acts she narrated. Even mature people may use euphemisms when describing sexual conduct; what this girl 

described was outside the range of her experience and may 

have seemed shameful or scarcely believable. Either could 

have led to the use of the word “dream” to describe reality. 

So the district judge thought.

Aleshire contends on appeal that the district judge is

wrong about this. That’s not the appropriate question, however. This search was authorized by a warrant, and following a strong suggestion in Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 236

(1983), we held in United States v. McIntire, 516 F.3d 576 (7th 

Cir. 2008), that a warrant-authorized search must be sustained unless it is pellucid that the judge who issued the 

warrant exceeded constitutional bounds. The precise standard in McIntire is: “A district court’s findings of historical 

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fact are reviewed for clear error, whether or not a warrant 

issued. [Ornelas v. United States, 517 U.S. 690, 699 (1996).] A 

district judge’s legal conclusions are reviewed without deference. And on the mixed question whether the facts add up 

to ‘probable cause’ under the right legal standard, we give 

no weight to the district judge’s decision—for the right inquiry is whether the judge who issued the warrant (rarely 

the same as the judge who ruled on the motion to suppress) 

acted on the basis of probable cause. On that issue we must 

afford ‘great deference’ to the issuing judge’s conclusion.” 

516 F.3d at 578 (emphasis in original).

Giving the issuing judge the benefit of “great deference,” 

we conclude that it was permissible to understand the word 

“dream” as a euphemism. Aleshire has not offered any evidence (say, a child psychologist’s affidavit) that might show

that nine-year-old girls always use the word “dream” literally. And the girl’s description was not the only fact in the affidavit submitted in support of the application for a warrant. 

The affidavit relayed a statement by the girl’s mother that 

the girl had used the word “dream” to describe real events 

before (she said, for example, that she had dreamed crawling 

into her parents’ bed—which the mother knew that she had 

done). The affidavit relayed Aleshire’s admission that he had

entered the girls’ sleeping area. It added that he had been 

convicted of sex crimes. Perhaps none of these facts by itself 

supplied probable cause, but judges do not view facts in isolation. As Gates holds, the question is whether the available 

facts, taken together, justify the proposed intrusion into the 

suspect’s private life. This was a properly issued warrant.

AFFIRMED

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