Opinion ID: 3160873
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Warrantless Police Search

Text: On June 4, 2012, Widner took the phone to the Fort Myers Police Department (“FMPD”). 5 When he arrived, he first spoke with a Community Service Aide (“CSA”) 6 named Cassie Coleman, who had been stationed at the front booth. Widner stated that he wanted to file a report about cell-phone images that he believed to be child pornography. He scrolled through the entire album he had previously viewed with Vo to show Coleman the photos he thought were questionable, but as soon as he located one and handed the phone to Coleman, the phone’s battery died, and the phone turned off. Widner then charged the phone at the FMPD. While the cell phone was recharging, CSA Sarah Gallegos and CSA trainee Amanda Janetzke introduced themselves to Widner, and Widner explained how he had come to possess the phone. Once the cell phone was sufficiently charged, Widner scrolled through it to show Gallegos and Janetzke the images he believed constituted child pornography. In doing this, Widner scrolled through the entirety of the album in thumbnail form, pausing several times to show Gallegos and Janetzke full-size images. Gallegos remembered some of the specific images that Widner showed her, including the 5 Originally, Widner brought the phone to the Lee County Sheriff’s Office in downtown Fort Myers. That Sheriff’s Office instructed him to take the phone to the FMPD. 6 CSAs are civilians, but for purposes of its Fourth Amendment analysis, the district court treated CSAs as government officials. 7 Case: 14-12143 Date Filed: 12/01/2015 Page: 8 of 64 image of the young naked female child with what appeared to be semen on her stomach. Widner also showed Gallegos a video of a young girl eating ice cream. While Widner displayed the images to Gallegos and Janetzke, text-message notifications appeared on the screen. No CSAs or FMPD personnel opened the text-message application or read the text messages during this encounter. Gallegos called Vo about the phone, and she advised Gallegos that a woman had been sending text messages to the found phone, insisting that she needed the phone back immediately. Vo did not know the woman’s last name or other identifying information. Gallegos and Janetzke contacted Detective-Sergeant Brian O’Reilly to notify him that the cell phone that Widner had brought to the station contained images of a pornographic nature involving children. Gallegos then gave the cell phone to O’Reilly and showed him some of the images that Widner had shown her. O’Reilly viewed the images himself to verify that, in fact, child pornography was on the phone. In addition to the images that Gallegos showed O’Reilly, O’Reilly briefly looked at two videos that were stored within the same album. One of the videos was that of the girl eating ice cream, which Widner had previously viewed. Widner had not watched the second video. As for the images that O’Reilly surveyed, O’Reilly looked at only those images contained within the same album that Widner had viewed. 8 Case: 14-12143 Date Filed: 12/01/2015 Page: 9 of 64 After concluding that the phone contained child pornography, O’Reilly turned the phone off and submitted it to evidence. He then contacted the Cape Coral Police Department, since, by that time, it had been established that Vo had found the phone at the Walmart located in Cape Coral, not Fort Myers. O’Reilly instructed Gallegos to prepare an offense report so that he could take the report and the cell phone to the Cape Coral Police Department. On June 5, 2012, O’Reilly logged the cell phone out of evidence and delivered it to the Cape Coral Police Department. He informed the Cape Coral Police Department that the phone had been found at a Walmart located in Cape Coral and that it contained images of child pornography. C. The Application for and Execution of the First and Second Search Warrants On June 7, 2012, Agent Patricia Enterline, a police officer employed by the Cape Coral Police Department who had been assigned to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (“FBI”) Innocent Images Task Force (“Task Force”), received a phone call as she was about to board a plane to attend training in another city. The call was from Sergeant Steve Barnes, the sergeant in charge of the major-crimes unit of the Cape Coral Police Department. Barnes told Enterline that she was assigned to a case involving a cell phone that may or may not contain child pornography. He also explained that the cell phone was found at a Walmart and turned in to law enforcement. 9 Case: 14-12143 Date Filed: 12/01/2015 Page: 10 of 64 Enterline was the only Cape Coral Police Department officer assigned to the FBI Task Force. In Enterline’s absence, the three other Task Force officers who might have been available to investigate the cell phone were not able to check the cell phone out of the Cape Coral Police Department evidence room. Enterline returned from her training late Friday night, on June 8, 2012, and left for another scheduled training class located in Maryland on Sunday, June 10, 2012. She got back from that training on Saturday, June 16, 2012. On Monday, June 18, 2012, Enterline checked the cell phone out of the Cape Coral Police Department evidence room and transferred it to the FBI. For the rest of that day, Enterline was working with an Assistant United States Attorney on another case. The next day, June 19, 2012, Enterline removed the cell phone’s protective case to procure the cell phone’s serial number. When she did that, she found three small pieces of paper, none of which provided information regarding ownership of the cell phone. Enterline did not pursue a search warrant on June 19, 2012, because she was leaving the next day for additional training on the other side of the state. When Enterline returned from her training on June 26, 2012, she attempted to contact O’Reilly and a state-court judge, but she was unable to reach either. On June 27, 2012, Enterline prepared an application for a search warrant and a supporting affidavit for the cell phone. To do so, Enterline did not turn on the cell phone or view any images but instead attempted to contact Vo and Widner by 10 Case: 14-12143 Date Filed: 12/01/2015 Page: 11 of 64 telephone. When she could reach neither, she called O’Reilly, who provided descriptions of the images he saw that he believed constituted child pornography. Enterline then presented the search warrant application and supporting affidavit to a state-court judge. The application did not attach any images. Instead, the affidavit included O’Reilly’s descriptions of images that he had viewed on the cell phone. The state-court judge found probable cause and signed the warrant on June 27, 2012. That same day, Enterline and her colleague Matt DeShazo, a forensic examiner, conducted a forensic examination of the phone. Enterline determined from data stored on the cell phone that Johnson owned the phone. Based on the information retrieved from the cell-phone search, she then obtained from the same judge a search warrant to search Johnson’s home, which Johnson shared with Sparks. Later that same day, June 27, 2012, Enterline and another law-enforcement officer went to Johnson’s home to execute the residence warrant, and they encountered Johnson. Johnson confirmed that he had lost the cell phone at Walmart. He also stated that within three days of having lost the phone, he filed an insurance claim with his phone company and received a replacement phone. He gave the replacement to Sparks. Additionally, by this time, Johnson had already purchased another phone for himself. 11 Case: 14-12143 Date Filed: 12/01/2015 Page: 12 of 64 In all, 1,322 sexually explicit still images and 45 sexually explicit videos that constituted child pornography were recovered from the cell phone. Another 508 sexually explicit images and 58 sexually explicit videos constituting child pornography were found on items within Johnson’s residence.