Opinion ID: 1211652
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The warrant is saved by the good faith exception.

Text: Even in the absence of probable cause, a warrant can be saved by the good faith exception. United States v. Olson, 408 F.3d 366, 372 (7th Cir.2005). Whether a law enforcement officer reasonably relied upon a subsequently invalidated search warrant is a legal question which we review de novo. United States v. Harju, 466 F.3d 602, 604 (7th Cir.2006). An officer's decision to obtain a warrant is prima facie evidence that he or she was acting in good faith. Olson, 408 F.3d at 372 (citing United States v. Koerth, 312 F.3d 862, 868 (7th Cir.2002)). However, a defendant may rebut this evidence, if the issuing judge `wholly abandoned his judicial role' and failed to perform his `neutral and detached function,' serving `merely as a rubber stamp for the police' or . . . the affidavit submitted in support of the warrant was `so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable.' Id. (quoting United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 914, 923, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984)). Prideaux-Wentz argues that a reasonable officer would have known that the warrant affidavit was lacking in probable cause because the affidavit establishes that Agent Paulson was inexperienced in evaluating child pornography, there was no foundation to rely on the behavior profile assertions, the evidence was stale, and the affidavit omitted material information that would have led a reasonably well-trained officer to know that more information was needed to establish probable cause. Although we have found that the absence of any time element renders the evidence stale, Prideaux-Wentz has failed to rebut the presumption that Agent Paulson was acting in good faith by relying on the warrant. Furthermore, he has not met the high standard required for a Franks hearing.
Prideaux-Wentz maintains that the affidavit and warrant did not establish Agent Paulson's reliability and expertise in describing and evaluating pornographic images. To support this point, Prideaux-Wentz relies on the fact that Stenzel, the NCMEC expert, disagreed with Agent Paulson's classification of some of the images as child pornography. This argument need not detain us long. Although Stenzel disagreed with Agent Paulson about the classification of several of the images, this disagreement was not based on Agent Paulson's perceived inexperience, but rather because it is often difficult to distinguish between child pornography and child erotica. Since Agent Paulson included a detailed description of each image, the magistrate judge was able to make his own determination about how to classify the images, ultimately concluding that eleven of the images constituted child pornography. See United States v. Lowe, 516 F.3d 580, 586 (7th Cir.2008) (holding that an issuing court can rely on a verbal description of images rather than the actual images to determine whether there is probable cause that the images constitute child pornography). Moreover, the warrant affidavit sufficiently established Agent Paulson's expertise and reliability because the affidavit was extremely detailed, explaining the child pornography and child erotica images in the Cyber Tips, the relevant statutory provisions, expert opinions regarding the behavior of child pornographers generally, and Agent Paulson's experiences with pornography-related searches. Based on these statements, we find that the affidavit sufficiently establishes Agent Paulson's expertise in evaluating child pornography. See United States v. Watzman, 486 F.3d 1004, 1008 (7th Cir.2007) (concluding that the affidavit sufficiently established the officer's expertise where the officer explained, in great detail, his experience with investigating child pornographers).