Court Opinion

ID: 9515267
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 22:55:10.893317+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:06:27.165799
License: Public Domain

MEIERHENRY, Justice
(concurring in result).
[¶ 40.] I concur in result. The proper review of this case is the two part analysis of Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154, 98 S.Ct. 2674, 57 L.Ed.2d 667 (1978). First, the defendant must show “that the police omitted facts with the intent to make, or in reckless disregard of whether they thereby made, the -affidavit misleading!)]” U.S. v. Jacobs, 986 F.2d 1231, 1234 (8thCir.1993) (citing U.S. v. Reivich, 793 F.2d 957, 961 (8thCir.1986)). Second, the defendant must further show “that the affidavit if supplemented by the omitted information would not have been sufficient to support a finding of probable cause.” Id. (citing Reivich, 793 F.2d at 961).
[¶ 41.] The main concern of the trial court was the omission of “explanatory information regarding the nature of the temporary internet files.” The trial court determined that “[a]ny reasonable person would have known that an explanation of temporary internet files was necessary to thoroughly inform the issuing judge.” The intentionally omitted material, according to the trial court, was “that a temporary internet file may be computer generated without the user knowing that such a file is being created.” Further, “no statement in the Affidavit indicates that pop-up windows may also generate temporary internet files without any action by the user.” Additionally, the trial court found that “without that explanatory information, the statements referring to ‘some files’ and ‘other files’ were misleading.” The trial court found the omission to be recklessly misleading.
[¶ 42.] In the affidavit, the officer explains that the technician first noticed the files while performing a diagnostic scan of defendant’s computer. The officer includes the following information:
9. ... [The technician] observed that the scan was taking a very long time and that it was in the temporary internet files for a very long time.
10. [The technician] decided at this point to delete the contents of the temporary internet files. [He] searched for the “content.ie5” folder and began deleting the files. [He] noted that this process *275seemed to be taking forever, and it didn’t seem to him to be deleting the files. [He] then started looking into the folders to see if the contents were being deleted and noted suspicious file names, using words like “hot boys”, “teens”, etc and [he] did open some of these files at this time.
11. ... upon opening some files he discovered that there were images of young males, depicted in a nude state, with some being clothed. [He] recalls one such image of two boys, guessing them to be 8 to 10 years of age, naked, sitting on the shore of a lake or stream, sitting side by side, hands behind them, with their legs spread.
12. ... [he] could not believe what he was seeing on the defendant’s computer and in this state of disbelief, did start opening other folders and images, observing similar images, as described in paragraph ll.[He] realized at this point that the system was still deleting the temporary internet files, so he stopped it from doing so.
The affidavit consistently refers to the suspicious files as temporary internet files. It does not appear from the four corners of the affidavit that the officer was attempting to mislead the court about the nature of the suspicious files being anything other than temporary internet files. Nevertheless, an explanation of how content gets placed into temporary internet files would have been helpful to the court’s determination of probable cause. “Any reasonable person would have known that this was the kind of thing the judge would wish to know.” Jacobs, 986 F.2d at 1235. Although an affidavit need not be hypertech-nical, information on the workings of the technology may be important for a judge to know, especially when the crime is committed by the use of that technology. Common sense tells us that the affiant needs to provide enough technical information for the judge to assess whether criminal activity is a probability. Consequently, the crucial omission was the officer’s failure to explain the nature of temporary internet files to the judge.
[¶43.] Under the second part of the analysis, the defendant must show that the omitted information, if added to the affidavit, would defeat a probable cause showing. Here, addition of the information would have informed the issuing court that the alleged child pornography in the temporary internet files may not have been viewed by the defendant and may have been stored in the temporary internet files without the defendant’s knowledge. However, adding this information does not defeat a finding of probable cause.
[¶ 44.] The standard of probable cause required for the issuance of a search warrant is a showing of “probability of criminal activity.” State v. Kaseman, 273 N.W.2d 716, 723 (S.D.1978) (citing State v. Gerber, 90 S.D. 432, 241 N.W.2d 720 (1976); State v. Haron, 88 S.D. 397, 220 N.W.2d 829 (1974)). In determining probability, it is not necessary that there be a “prima facie showing of legal evidence of a suspected act.” Id. Under this standard, with the added information, there was still a probability of criminal activity, ie., that there was a probability that someone purposely retrieved the pictures from the internet and viewed them without saving them to a user created file. Consequently, the defendant has failed to meet the second part of the analysis. I would reverse for these reasons.