Court Opinion

ID: 9706362
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:41:42.651664+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:21.970493
License: Public Domain

PRESIDING JUSTICE HOMER, specially concurring: I agree with the majority’s judgment reversing defendant’s conviction due to police infringement of his constitutional rights. In my opinion, however, the fourth amendment was implicated the moment that Deputy Chisolm turned on the computer and clicked on the computer’s “favored bookmarks,” as he testified. It has been held that the fourth amendment protection afforded to a person’s closed computer files and computer hard drives is similar to the protection afforded a person’s closed containers and closed personal effects. See United States v. Barth, 26 F. Supp. 2d 929, 936 (WD. Texas 1998). By placing information in computer files, a person manifests a reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of those files. Barth, 26 F. Supp. 2d at 936-37. In the absence of valid consent, a warrant is ordinarily required to search the contents of a person’s closed container. People v. Bull, 185 Ill. 2d 179, 705 N.E.2d 824 (1998). In order for the consent to be valid, the person from whom it is obtained must have either actual or apparent authority to give the consent. Bull, 185 Ill. 2d at 197-99, 705 N.E.2d at 833-34. In this case, Deputy Chisolm activated the computer after learning from Howard Blair that the computer belonged to defendant. Accordingly, the officers could not have believed that Blair possessed the requisite authority to consent to its search. Without valid consent, this warrantless search of the computer and its contents was unlawful and any evidence subsequently obtained therefrom must be suppressed as fruit of the poisonous tree. See Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 9 L. Ed. 2d 441, 83 S. Ct. 407 (1963). Through this concurrence, I express no opinion about the conclusions drawn by the majority in its discussion of the ineffectiveness of Blair’s consent to “seize” the computer. I simply believe that such analysis is unnecessary to the resolution of this appeal.