Court Opinion

ID: 9523574
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:44:17.827704+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:06:31.647936
License: Public Domain

MATHIAS, J.,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent,
*382I am very sensitive to the tragedy of child pornography, but eleven months is a very long time, especially when one of the most important criteria for the issuance of a search warrant is the accuracy of the facts alleged. Such accuracy usually has an inverse relationship to the age of the facts alleged. This is precisely why stale information cannot and should not support the finding of probable cause. See Seeley, 782 N.E.2d at 1060. Instead, such stale information gives rise only to a mere suspicion, “especially when the items to be obtained in the search are easily concealed and moved.” Id. It is hard to imagine something that can be more easily concealed, moved, or even destroyed than a digital image. Indeed, such images are a mouse-click away from being moved or deleted. If deleted with today’s computer utility software, such files may well not be recoverable, even with the best forensic software and techniques.5
I would also note that in the Indiana cases cited by the majority, the staleness of the information did not even approach eleven months. See Allen, 798 N.E.2d at 498 (almost two months); Seeley, 782 N.E.2d at 1061 (one month); McGrew, 673 N.E.2d at 793 (eighty-one days); Moran, 644 N.E.2d at 541-42 (three months); Foster, 633 N.E.2d at 345 (twenty-eight days); Bigler, 602 N.E.2d at 516 (twenty-one days); Williams, 426 N.E.2d at 667 (sixty-seven days).
Moreover, the facts in Newsom, one of the federal cases cited by the majority, are readily distinguishable. In addressing the sufficiency of the information supporting the search warrant in that case, the New-som court specifically noted that, in addition to having seen child pornography on the defendant’s computer over a year earlier, the girlfriend had “recently discovered videos of her daughter.” 402 F.3d at 783 (emphasis added). Unlike Newsom, this is not the case where the police have recently come into possession of information of a crime which may have occurred some time ago. Instead, the police here had information that Mehring may have possessed child pornography on his computer over ten months ago. Without more, this extremely stale information cannot and should not be adequate for a finding of probable cause.
To support their conclusion, the majority relies upon Detective Spivey’s opinion that those who view child pornography tend to store such illegal information for long periods of time. This opinion is accepted as factual despite not being subject to cross-examination or being corroborated by any supporting professional article on the topic, which, if the opinion is accurate, should not have been difficult to obtain during the almost eleven-month interim.
I do not believe the opinion of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Lacy is persuasive on this issue. The Lacy court simply relied upon a similarly unsupported claim by a customs agent that collectors of child pornography tend to retain such materials for long periods of time. 119 F.3d at 746. Just because this allegation is repeated does not make it true.6 Under *383the majority’s reasoning, both the durability of digital images and the alleged tendency of pedophiles to hoard and preserve such images would justify a search warrant based upon information that was not only several months old, but several years old.7
Finally, nowhere did any investigating authority explain to the trial court or to this court on appeal why the extremely broad electronic eavesdropping authority available to law enforcement today was never used during the intervening eleven months before the search warrant was issued. Such eavesdropping on Mehring’s current IP address could well have disclosed the fresh and accurate information that search warrants are supposed to be based and depend upon. Cf. Newsom, 402 F.3d at 782. Even a simple LimeWire search, which was the genesis of the investigation of Mehring almost eleven months earlier, could have revealed whether images of child pornography had more recently been available from the IP address of Mehring’s computer. This is not an onerous burden to place upon law enforcement before authorizing the police to enter a citizen’s home and search her or his computer.
In short, I do not believe that the information provided in the probable cause affidavit supported the trial court’s issuance of a search warrant. I would therefore reverse the trial court’s decision and grant Mehring’s motion to suppress.

. See, e.g., http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ sysinternals/bb897443.aspx (“The only way to ensure that deleted files ... are safe from recovery is to use a secure delete application. Secure delete applications overwrite a deleted file's on-disk data using techniques that are shown to make disk data unrecoverable, even using recovery technology that can read patterns in magnetic media that reveal weakly deleted files.”).

. This is not to say that I would be surprised if this proposition were borne out by actual evidence. It is also noteworthy that this allegation shows up in substantially similar language in law enforcement probable cause affidavits in many cases, both state and federal. *383See e.g., United States v. Zimmerman, 277 F.3d 426, 433 (3d Cir.2002); United States v. Harvey, 2 F.3d 1318, 1323 (3d Cir.1993); United States v. Koelling, 992 F.2d 817, 819 (8th Cir.1993); United States v. Rabe, 848 F.2d 994, 996 (9th Cir.1988); People v. Nicholls, 159 Cal.App.4th 703, 71 Cal.Rptr.3d 621, 624 (2008); Commonwealth, v. Gomolekoff, 910 A.2d 710, 714 (Pa.Super.Ct.2006); Taylor v. State, 54 S.W.3d 21, 23 (Tex.App.2001).

. For example, too many homeowners have “open” wireless internet connections which do not require a password to use. Any house-guest, neighbor, or passerby with a wireless internet device could download child pornography through that open connection unbeknownst to the homeowner. Under the majority’s holding, the homeowner would then become subject to searches of his or her home and computer months or even years later, without any information supporting the search warrant other than the fact that, some time ago, someone used the homeowner's internet connection to download illegal materials. While such facts may be a strong reason to use a closed, password-protected wireless internet connection, I do not think they should justify the issuance of a search warrant.