In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 19-2636 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

v.

MARK MCGILL, 

Defendant-Appellant. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. 

No. 17-cr-149 — Virginia M. Kendall, Judge. 

____________________ 

ARGUED MARCH 30, 2021 — DECIDED AUGUST 10, 2021 

____________________ 

Before KANNE, BRENNAN, and SCUDDER, Circuit Judges. 

KANNE, Circuit Judge. During a visit to Mark McGill’s 

home, McGill’s probation officer seized a cell phone without 

warrant to do so. Law enforcement later discovered thousands of images of child pornography on the phone and 

charged McGill accordingly. McGill, arguing that his phone 

had been unlawfully seized, moved to suppress the phone 

and all evidence obtained from it. 
2 No. 19-2636 

The district court denied this motion on a number of independent grounds, concluding that McGill’s cell phone was 

lawfully seized or otherwise need not be suppressed. We 

agree with this conclusion and thus affirm the district court’s 

decision denying McGill’s motion to suppress.

I. BACKGROUND

In a prior case years ago, Mark McGill was convicted of 

possessing child pornography and sentenced to sixty-five 

months’ imprisonment. In November 2014, he completed his 

prison sentence and began serving seven years of supervised 

release.

The conditions of McGill’s supervised release prohibited

him from “commit[ting] another federal, state, or local crime” 

and required him to “permit a probation officer to visit him at 

any time at home or elsewhere and ... [to] permit confiscation 

of any contraband observed in plain view of the probation officer.” He also agreed to “comply with the requirements of the 

Computer and Internet Monitoring Program,” under which 

he, among other things, “consent[ed] to the installation of 

computer monitoring software on all identified computers to 

which [he] has access.” The conditions further provided that 

he “shall not remove, tamper with, reverse engineer, or in any 

way circumvent the software.”

McGill has a history of violating the terms of his supervised release. In October 2015, his probation officer discovered that McGill had viewed sexually stimulating videos and 

images of minors on his monitored cell phone. McGill admitted to the violation, and the district court added a condition 

of supervised release that prohibited McGill from “possess[ing] or hav[ing] under his control any pornographic, 
No. 19-2636 3

sexually oriented, or sexually stimulating materials, including visual, auditory, telephonic, or electronic media, computer program, or services.” McGill later failed two polygraph tests, administered as part of his sex offender treatment 

program, which detected deception when he was asked 

whether he had sexual contact with a minor. 

The events underlying this appeal occurred on February 

3, 2017, when Probation Officer Hence Williams conducted a

home visit at McGill’s residence. Officer Williams had substantial experience, having worked as a probation officer for 

twelve years and specialized in supervising sex offenders for 

five years. He had been supervising McGill for about nine 

months before this home visit. 

When Officer Williams entered McGill’s bedroom, he observed two cell phones—a black cell phone that the officer recognized as McGill’s monitored phone and an unknown white 

cell phone in a black case on a table by the bed. 

According to Officer Williams, McGill moved around the 

room in an attempt to block the officer’s view of the second 

cell phone. When Officer Williams asked about the phone, 

McGill told him that it was an old cell phone that no longer 

worked and that he only used it to charge a spare battery for 

the monitored phone. McGill removed the battery to show 

that it fit into the other phone. Officer Williams did not believe that explanation. At Officer Williams’s request, McGill 

replaced the battery and handed the white phone to him. 

Officer Williams claims that McGill’s demeanor changed 

when he asked about the phone. He became “deflated” and 

“sad” and said that he “would go back to prison for a long 

time if the judge found out what was on th[e] phone.” Officer 
4 No. 19-2636 

Williams asked if there was child pornography on the phone, 

and McGill said, “there is.” For his part, McGill denies that he 

made any admissions about what was on the phone or that he 

acted suspiciously. 

McGill asserts that Officer Williams then said, “I’m taking 

the phone,” and ended the encounter. Officer Williams, on the 

other hand, claims that he was able to power on the phone, 

saw that the background photo was of a young boy’s face, and 

then powered it off. In either case, Officer Williams took the 

phone with him and turned it over to the FBI, who obtained a 

search warrant. The subsequent search of the phone revealed 

thousands of images of child pornography.

McGill was again charged with possessing child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(5)(B). He filed a motion to suppress the evidence recovered from the unmonitored phone as the fruit of an unlawful seizure. After an evidentiary hearing at which Officer Williams testified and 

McGill did not (he relied merely on statements in an affidavit), the district court denied McGill’s motion for four reasons:

(1) the phone was contraband in Officer Williams’s plain 

view; (2) the seizure was supported by Officer Williams’s reasonable suspicion that the phone contained evidence of a supervised-release violation or crime; (3) the discovery of the 

evidence was inevitable; and (4) Officer Williams acted in 

good faith when he seized the phone. 

McGill then entered a conditional plea of guilty which reserved his right to appeal the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress. Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(a)(2). The district court 

accepted the plea and sentenced McGill to 168 months’ imprisonment and ten years’ supervised release. McGill timely 

appealed.
No. 19-2636 5

II. ANALYSIS

When reviewing a district court’s decision denying a motion to suppress evidence, we review the court’s legal conclusions de novo and its factual findings for clear error. United 

States v. Mojica, 863 F.3d 727, 731 (7th Cir. 2017). On clear-error 

review, we reverse the court’s findings only if our “review of 

the all the evidence leaves us with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been made.” United States v. Love, 

706 F.3d 832, 842 (7th Cir. 2013). 

The district court’s analysis in this case was spot on. The 

evidence from McGill’s cell phone need not be suppressed for 

two independent reasons. First, the seizure of McGill’s cell 

phone was lawful. Second, even if the phone was unlawfully 

seized, the evidence may still be admitted under an exception 

to the exclusionary rule. 

A. The Seizure of McGill’s Cell Phone Did Not Violate the 

Fourth Amendment 

Generally, “searches and seizures inside a home without 

a warrant are presumptively unreasonable” under the Fourth 

Amendment. Kentucky v. King, 563 U.S. 452, 459 (2011) (quoting Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398, 403 (2006)). But “the 

warrant requirement is subject to certain reasonable exceptions.” Id. (citing Brigham City, 547 U.S. at 403). 

One such exception is known as the plain-view doctrine, 

which permits officers in certain situations to seize property 

without a warrant when the property’s incriminating nature 

is “immediately apparent.” See United States v. Contreras, 820 

F.3d 255, 262 (7th Cir. 2016). Another exception permits law 

enforcement to seize property in a probationer’s home so long 

as the officer has reasonable suspicion that the property is 
6 No. 19-2636 

evidence of a crime. See United States v. Knights, 534 U.S. 112, 

120 (2001). 

In this case, there is no question that Officer Williams 

“seized” McGill’s phone within the meaning of the Fourth 

Amendment and that he had no warrant to do so. See United 

States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113 (1984) (“A ‘seizure’ of property occurs when there is some meaningful interference with 

an individual’s possessory interests in that property.”). Nor 

does anyone question that “a probationer’s home, like anyone 

else’s, is protected by the Fourth Amendment’s requirement 

that searches [and seizures] be reasonable.” United States v. 

Caya, 956 F.3d 498, 502 (7th Cir. 2020) (quoting Griffin v. Wisconsin, 483 U.S. 868, 873 (1987)). 

Thus, the debate here is whether Officer William’s warrantless seizure fell into an exception to the warrant requirement. We find that it did. 

1. Plain View

Government officials may seize property without a warrant under the plain-view doctrine if (1) the officer is lawfully 

present at the place of the seizure, (2) the seized object is in 

the plain view of the officer, and (3) the incriminating nature 

of the object is immediately apparent. United States v. Raney, 

342 F.3d 551, 558–59 (7th Cir. 2003) (citing United States v. 

Bruce, 109 F.3d 323, 328–29 (7th Cir. 1997)).

There is no dispute that the first two elements are satisfied

here—Officer Williams was lawfully present in McGill’s 

house, and the unmonitored phone was in plain view. The 

only issue, then, is whether the phone’s incriminating nature 

was immediately apparent.
No. 19-2636 7

The incriminating nature of an item is “immediately apparent” if an officer has “probable cause to believe that the 

item is contraband or otherwise linked to criminal activity.” 

United States v. Cellitti, 387 F.3d 618, 624 (7th Cir. 2004) (citing 

Bruce, 109 F.3d at 328). With a probationer like McGill, that 

criminal activity can include a violation of his conditions of 

supervised release. See United States v. Herndon, 501 F.3d 683, 

689 (6th Cir. 2007); 18 U.S.C. § 3583(h) (allowing a court to revoke a defendant’s term of supervised release and impose a 

term of imprisonment). Even “an ordinarily innocuous object” may be seized under this doctrine “when the context of 

an investigation casts that item in a suspicious light.” Cellitti, 

387 F.3d at 624. 

Although the district court determined “that the unmonitored cell phone was not in and of itself a violation of McGill’s 

conditions of supervised release,” it found that the incriminating nature of the phone was immediately apparent to Officer Williams under the circumstances. We agree.

The circumstances of the seizure were as follows: McGill’s 

supervised-release conditions prohibited him from having 

contact with minors or possessing any sexually stimulating 

materials, including on a cell phone. At the time of the home 

visit, Officer Williams knew that McGill had previously violated the terms of his release by viewing child pornography 

on a cell phone and that he had failed two polygraph tests 

regarding his compliance with his supervised-release conditions. Officer Williams testified that he observed a cell phone 

that he believed was capable of connecting to the internet and 

that might relate to the failed polygraphs. He further testified 

that McGill attempted to hide the phone from his view and 

changed his demeanor when asked about the phone. McGill’s 
8 No. 19-2636 

odd explanation for having the phone—to charge an extra 

battery—further increased Officer Williams’s suspicion, particularly because it didn’t make sense to keep the phone in a 

case if its only purpose was charging a battery. Finally, Officer 

Williams was able to power on the phone, contrary to 

McGill’s story, and observed a photo of a young boy on the 

phone’s wallpaper.

Although McGill denied that he acted nervously or tried 

to block Officer Williams’s view of the phone, the district 

court gave little weight to his version of events set out in his 

affidavit and gave great weight to Officer Williams’s testimony at the hearing. Our review of the evidence does not 

“leave[] us with the definite and firm conviction” that the district court erred in its credibility assessment. Love, 706 F.3d at 

842. So we accept its findings of fact.

Based on the above facts, Officer Williams had probable 

cause to believe that the unmonitored cell phone was linked 

to a violation of McGill’s supervised-release conditions and 

thus the phone’s incriminating nature was “immediately apparent. See Raney, 342 F.3d at 559; Cellitti, 387 F.3d at 624. Because the incriminating nature of the phone was immediately 

apparent, Officer Williams’s seizure was lawful under the 

plain-view doctrine, and the evidence that stemmed from that 

seizure need not be suppressed. 

2. Reasonable Suspicion

“Inherent in the very nature of probation is that probationers ‘do not enjoy “the absolute liberty to which every citizen 

is entitled.”’” Knights, 534 U.S. at 119 (quoting Griffin, 483 U.S. 

at 874). Along those lines, the Supreme Court has explained 

that there are several considerations unique to probationers 
No. 19-2636 9

that inform what is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, 

including that a “probationer ‘is more likely than the ordinary 

citizen to violate the law,’” id. at 120 (quoting Griffin, 483 U.S. 

at 880), and that “probationers have even more of an incentive 

to conceal their criminal activities and quickly dispose of incriminating evidence than the ordinary criminal,” id. So although a warrantless seizure ordinarily requires probable 

cause, “the balance of these considerations requires no more 

than reasonable suspicion” in cases involving a probationer.

Id. at 121. 

Reasonable suspicion is “more than a hunch but less than 

probable cause.” United States v. Wilson, 963 F.3d 701, 703 (7th 

Cir. 2020). It requires “a particularized and objective basis” 

for suspecting that a person is breaking the law, United States 

v. Rodriguez-Escalera, 884 F.3d 661, 668 (7th Cir. 2018), and it 

“must be based on commonsense judgments and inferences 

about human behavior,” United States v. Eymann, 962 F.3d 273, 

282 (7th Cir. 2020) (quoting Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119, 

125 (2000)). 

For the same reasons laid out in the previous section, Officer Williams had reasonable suspicion to believe that McGill 

was in violation of his conditions of supervised release and 

that the cell phone was evidence of that violation or other 

criminal act. Officer Williams observed an unknown, unmonitored phone that appeared to be capable of connecting to the 

internet. He knew that McGill had failed polygraph tests regarding his compliance with his terms of supervised release, 

and he observed McGill’s suspicious behavior upon noticing 

the unmonitored phone. And Officer Williams—an experienced probation officer with training in monitoring sex offenders on supervised release—had been monitoring McGill 
10 No. 19-2636 

for some time before this incident. Taken together, these circumstances provided Officer Williams with reasonable suspicion to seize the phone as evidence of a supervised-release violation or crime. Suppression, therefore, is not warranted. 

B. Even If the Phone Was Illegally Seized, the Evidence Need 

Not Be Excluded

Even if we assume that the seizure was not supported by 

the above doctrines, the evidence still need not be suppressed 

in this case. True, when the government obtains evidence in 

violation of an individual’s Fourth Amendment rights, the 

remedy is generally the exclusion of that evidence—and evidence that is the fruit of the illegal search or seizure—at trial. 

Utah v. Strieff, 136 S. Ct. 2056, 2061 (2016). But this rule does 

not apply automatically. Rather, it applies “only ... where its 

deterrence benefits outweigh its substantial social costs,” and 

certain exceptions to the rule have arisen accordingly. Id. at 

2061 (quoting Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586, 591 (2006)).

One such exception is when the evidence inevitably would 

have been discovered. Another exception is when the officer 

acted in good faith.

1. Inevitable Discovery

Under the inevitable-discovery doctrine, “illegally seized 

evidence need not be suppressed if the government can prove 

by a preponderance of the evidence that the evidence inevitably would have been discovered by lawful means.” United 

States v. Pelletier, 700 F.3d 1109, 1116 (7th Cir. 2012) (citing Nix 

v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431, 442–44 (1984)). 

Officer Williams’s observations in McGill’s home and 

McGill’s statement that the phone contained evidence of child 

pornography were sufficient justification for the government 
No. 19-2636 11

to obtain a warrant to seize the phone. See id. at 1117 (“It is 

unreasonable to think that, after [the defendant] admitted to 

two FBI agents that he had child pornography, the FBI would 

have failed to follow up and obtain a search warrant.”). Indeed, Officer Williams testified that, based on this information, he filed a violation report and requested a search warrant, bench warrant, and detention hearing in McGill’s underlying case. Thus, the discovery of the evidence was inevitable

and need not be suppressed.

2. Good Faith

Finally, the exclusionary rule does not apply here because 

Officer Williams acted in good faith when he seized the cell 

phone. As noted above, the exclusionary rule does not apply

automatically when an individual’s Fourth Amendment 

rights are violated. Strieff, 136 S. Ct. at 2061. Rather, the exclusionary rule applies where “[t]he benefits of deterrence ... 

outweigh the costs.” Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135, 141 

(2009) (citing United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 909 (1984)). 

When law enforcement acts “with an objectively reasonable 

good-faith belief that their conduct is lawful ... the deterrence 

rationale loses much of its force,” and the exclusionary rule 

does not apply. Davis v. United States, 564 U.S. 229, 238 (2011).

Officer Williams testified that he believed that the unmonitored phone violated McGill’s conditions of supervised release and that it would also impede his ability to keep McGill 

in compliance. The district court found Officer Williams’s testimony credible, and we see no basis for concluding that its 

finding was clearly erroneous. Because Officer Williams acted 

with objective good faith in seizing the cell phone, the evidence need not be excluded.
12 No. 19-2636 

III. CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the denial of McGill’s 

motion to suppress.