Court Opinion

ID: 9895467
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-07 15:00:47.495185+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:12:49.455094
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 22-11817     Document: 38-1      Date Filed: 11/07/2023   Page: 1 of 13

                                                     [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                     In the
                 United States Court of Appeals
                          For the Eleventh Circuit

                           ____________________

                                  No. 22-11817
                            Non-Argument Calendar
                           ____________________

        UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
                                                        Plaintiﬀ-Appellee,
        versus
        ARNOLD D. HOLLAND,
        a.k.a. manboy12,

                                                     Defendant-Appellant.

                           ____________________

                  Appeals from the United States District Court
                      for the Northern District of Georgia
                   D.C. Docket No. 1:03-cr-00336-CAP-AJB-1
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        2                    Opinion of the Court                22-11817

                           ____________________

                           ____________________

                                 No. 22-11819
                           Non-Argument Calendar
                           ____________________

        UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
                                                       Plaintiﬀ-Appellee,
        versus
        ARNOLD D. HOLLAND,
        a.k.a. Threezy3Three,
        a.k.a. A.D.,

                                                    Defendant-Appellant.

                           ____________________

                 Appeals from the United States District Court
                     for the Northern District of Georgia
                  D.C. Docket No. 1:19-cr-00399-MLB-JKL-1
                           ____________________

        Before LAGOA, BRASHER, and TJOFLAT, Circuit Judges.
        PER CURIAM:
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        22-11817               Opinion of the Court                        3

               Arnold Holland appeals his 468-month sentence and the rev-
        ocation of his supervised release after pleading guilty to eight
        counts of producing child pornography. Holland challenges the
        District Court’s denial of his motion to suppress evidence. He ar-
        gues that his probation officer did not have reasonable suspicion to
        search his home because the information prompting the search was
        stale. Holland also claims that the District Court committed plain
        error by not finding a term of his supervised release unconstitution-
        ally vague.
               We hold that the District Court did not err. The totality of
        the circumstances and collective knowledge of the officers sup-
        ported a reasonable suspicion to search Holland’s home, and the
        information supporting their reasonable suspicion was not stale
        about a year later. Nor need we address Holland’s vagueness claim
        because the exact definition of “sexually oriented material” as a vi-
        olation of his compliance contract is irrelevant to whether reason-
        able suspicion existed. Accordingly, we affirm.
                                         I.
               In 2004, Defendant Holland was sentenced to 151 months’
        imprisonment after pleading guilty to ten counts of receiving child
        pornography. He was released from custody in July 2014 and com-
        menced a three-year term of supervised release. Before and during
        his supervised release, Holland resided at Dismas House, a halfway
        house. In February 2015, he was expelled from Dismas House for
        possessing a cell phone with photo capabilities, violating house
        rules.
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        4                     Opinion of the Court                 22-11817

                About two years later, Holland’s probation oﬃcer visited
        Holland at his residence. Inside, the oﬃcer discovered multiple un-
        authorized cell phones in Holland’s possession. When asked if the
        phones contained pornography, Holland said that “there would be
        ages 16 and up.” After conﬁscating and searching the phones, the
        oﬃcer initiated proceedings to revoke Holland’s supervised release
        for breaching his compliance contract. The violations included
        possessing seven unauthorized cell phones with internet capabili-
        ties and two phones (of the seven) containing sexually oriented ma-
        terial or pornography.
               Holland admitted to these violations. The District Court re-
        voked his supervised release and sentenced him to one day in
        prison and two years of supervised release, six months to be served
        at Dismas House. All other general and special conditions of Hol-
        land’s supervised release applied from the original judgment and
        commitment.
               Holland entered a new sex oﬀender compliance contract as
        part of his supervised release terms. He agreed not to possess, pur-
        chase, or subscribe to any sexually oriented material or pornogra-
        phy, including through mail, computer, telephone (900 numbers),
        video, or television; and not to visit any venues oﬀering it. He had
        to obtain written approval from his probation oﬃcer before using
        any electronic bulletin board system, internet services, or com-
        puter networks, which included allowing routine inspections of his
        computer systems and media storage. Holland also agreed that any
        computer system he could access was subject to inspection and
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        22-11817                  Opinion of the Court                               5

        permitted conﬁscation and disposal of any contraband found. In
        short, Holland could not (1) possess any sexually oriented material,
        (2) use the internet without prior authorization, or (3) possess any
        internet-accessible cell phones.
                In March 2018, Shannon Brewer, a Senior U.S. Probation Of-
        ﬁcer, assumed Holland’s supervision. In preparation, she reviewed
        Holland’s prior case materials, such as his presentence investigation
        report, judgment and commitment documents, case-related rec-
        ords, notes from previous oﬃcers, and his compliance contract.
        Oﬃcer Brewer learned that Holland had prior charges related to
        sexual oﬀenses against minors, including a mistrial in 1996 and the
        dismissal of a 1999 case. She also learned that federal agents recov-
        ered Holland’s diary after the 1996 case’s dismissal, revealing en-
        tries about his relationship with the victim and eﬀorts to coerce the
        victim into recanting his accusations against Holland. Oﬃcer
        Brewer’s review also revealed Holland’s 2004 federal conviction,
        2015 expulsion from Dismas House, and 2017 revocation of his su-
        pervised release. Further, she learned that, according to a psycho-
        sexual evaluation in 2014, Holland had a high risk of reoﬀending.
               On March 31, 2018, the National Center for Missing and Ex-
        ploited Children (NCMEC) received a cybertip 1 that, in December

        1 Special Agent Elizabeth Bigham clariﬁed that cybertips are mandated by fed-

        eral law, requiring internet service providers to report any form of child por-
        nography, child sex traﬃcking, or online exploitation of a child to the
        NCMEC. See 18 U.S.C. § 2258A. This obligation extends to all platforms, like
        Google, Instagram, Snapchat, and other online services. The information is
        reported to the NCMEC in the form of a cybertip.
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        6                         Opinion of the Court                   22-11817

        2017 and January 2018, an individual under the username
        “yungcool1s” uploaded four images of prepubescent boys to Insta-
        gram. Instagram disclosed that the account’s display name was
        “Yung In Atl” and provided the associated email address,
        branbarn90@gmail.com. NCMEC passed this tip along to the
        Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), which assigned the case to
        Special Agent (SA) Bigham on April 26, 2018.
                The information provided to the GBI included the IP ad-
        dress used to upload one of the images. SA Bigham, using public
        data, determined that T-Mobile owned the IP address, suggesting
        that the upload came from a mobile device. But when she subpoe-
        naed T-Mobile, it no longer had information on that address. A
        subpoena to Google for information on the Gmail account, how-
        ever, revealed that the account was linked to the phone number
        (404) 914-4767. Further investigation uncovered that Holland had
        listed this number on his Georgia driver’s license.
               Delving deeper into Holland’s background, SA Bigham dis-
        covered his criminal history, including a previous conviction for
        child exploitation and sex oﬀender registration. SA Bigham
        reached out to the NCMEC for information on the username
        “yungcool1s,” revealing a December 2018 cybertip from Tumblr,
        a platform often exploited by oﬀenders for the distribution and ex-
        change of child pornography. 2 The tip documented many broken
        links alleged to have contained child pornography.
              On January 3, 2019, SA Bigham notiﬁed Oﬃcer Brewer that
        the GBI had received intelligence about Holland. The exact details

        2 SA Bigham described Tumblr as a “website that you can blog on,” “post pic-

        tures [and] videos,” and “chat with people.”
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        22-11817              Opinion of the Court                        7

        of the conversation were not fully recalled but SA Bigham shared
        the ﬁndings of her investigation: Holland was seemingly posting
        erotic images of ten- to twelve-year-old boys to Instagram. SA
        Bigham explained that the boys in the photographs were not fully
        unclothed but that outlines of their genitals were visible. She also
        conﬁrmed that the phone number on Holland’s driver’s license was
        associated with the Instagram account. Neither Oﬃcer Brewer nor
        SA Bigham recalled whether SA Bigham shared the speciﬁc upload
        dates of the four images.
               After speaking with SA Bigham, Oﬃcer Brewer worried that
        Holland was violating the terms of his release. She suspected that
        Holland might have had unauthorized cell phones in his possession
        and was using them to store sexually explicit material and access
        social media.
               On January 14, 2019, Oﬃcer Brewer and other probation of-
        ﬁcers searched Holland’s residence. They discovered four unau-
        thorized cell phones, which contained the evidence used in the
        criminal charges now brought against Holland. SA Bigham was
        present during the search but she did not participate; instead, she
        waited outside with other GBI oﬃcers while interviewing Holland.
               Holland moved to suppress the search of his home, the sei-
        zure of the phones, and, in turn, the search of the phones. The
        Magistrate Judge determined that the totality of the circumstances
        established reasonable suspicion that Holland had breached the
        conditions of his release and recommended denying Holland’s mo-
        tion. The District Court adopted the Magistrate Judge’s recom-
        mendation, leading to this appeal.
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        8                       Opinion of the Court                    22-11817

                                           II.
               Holland claims that the District Court erred in concluding
        that Oﬃcer Brewer had reasonable suspicion that he was violating
        his supervised release terms. He says Oﬃcer Brewer’s suspicion
        was based on stale information because the Instagram photos were
        posted a year before the search. He also contends that the “sexually
        oriented material” clause rendered his compliance contract overly
        broad and void for vagueness.
                The Government responds that the oﬃcers’ collective
        knowledge before the search provided reasonable suspicion. It as-
        serts that Holland’s staleness argument overlooks the totality of the
        circumstances known to the oﬃcers.
               In reply, Holland concedes that Oﬃcer Brewer only needed
        reasonable suspicion of a violation or a new crime but attacks the
        use of the oﬃcers’ collective knowledge. Holland maintains that
        the collective knowledge doctrine applies only if oﬃcers act as a
        team and request action from one another, which, per Holland,
        was not the case here.
                                           III.
                This Court reviews a district court’s denial of a motion to
        suppress de novo. United States v. Carter, 566 F.3d 970, 973 (11th Cir.
        2009) (per curiam). We view all evidence in the light most favora-
        ble to the prevailing party. Id.
                “The touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is reasonable-
        ness . . . .” United States v. Knights, 534 U.S. 112, 118, 122 S. Ct. 587,
        591 (2001). We assess the reasonableness of a search by balancing
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        22-11817                Opinion of the Court                           9

        its intrusion upon an individual’s privacy against its necessity for
        advancing legitimate government interests. See id. at 118–19, 122
        S. Ct. at 591. A search may be supported by reasonable suspicion
        “[w]hen a probationer has a condition of probation reducing his
        expectation of privacy, and the government has a higher interest in
        monitoring the probationer due to the nature of his criminal his-
        tory.” Carter, 566 F.3d at 975. “Such limitations are permitted be-
        cause probationers have been convicted of crimes and have thereby
        given the state a compelling interest in limiting their liberty in or-
        der to eﬀectuate their rehabilitation and to protect society.” Owens
        v. Kelley, 681 F.2d 1362, 1367 (11th Cir. 1982).
                “Reasonable suspicion consists of a suﬃciently high proba-
        bility that criminal conduct is occurring to make the intrusion on
        the individual’s privacy interest reasonable.” United States v. Yuknav-
        ich, 419 F.3d 1302, 1311 (11th Cir. 2005) (quoting Knights, 534 U.S.
        at 121, 122 S. Ct. at 592). Courts will look to the totality of the
        circumstances of each case and determine whether the oﬃcer had
        a “particularized and objective basis for suspecting legal wrongdo-
        ing.” Id. (quoting United States v. Perkins, 348 F.3d 965, 970 (11th Cir.
        2003)). “The oﬃcer must ‘be able to point to speciﬁc and articula-
        ble facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those
        facts, reasonably warrant’” the search. Id. (quoting United States v.
        Boyce, 351 F.3d 1102, 1107 (11th Cir. 2003)).
              Reasonable suspicion is also determined from the collective
        knowledge of the oﬃcers. See United States v. Nunez, 455 F.3d 1223,
        1226 (11th Cir. 2006) (per curiam). To examine collective
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        10                     Opinion of the Court                  22-11817

        knowledge, the oﬃcers must have at least maintained “a minimal
        level of communication during their investigation.” United States v.
        Willis, 759 F.2d 1486, 1494 (11th Cir. 1985). In United States v. Esle,
        this Court held that there was ample communication to apply the
        collective knowledge principle where one oﬃcer, who had proba-
        ble cause for a search, was in contact with a second oﬃcer in setting
        up the search and was present in the vicinity at the time of the
        search, and the second oﬃcer testiﬁed that another agent told him
        about the basis for the probable cause. 743 F.2d 1465, 1476 (11th
        Cir. 1984) (per curiam), overruled on other grounds by United States v.
        Blankenship, 382 F.3d 1110, 1122 n.23 (11th Cir. 2004).
                Moreover, reasonable suspicion “does not require oﬃcers to
        catch the suspect in a crime. Instead, [a] reasonable suspicion of
        criminal activity may be formed by observing exclusively legal ac-
        tivity.” United States v. Harris, 526 F.3d 1334, 1337 (11th Cir. 2008)
        (per curiam) (alteration in original) (quoting United States v. Acosta,
        363 F.3d 1141, 1145 (11th Cir. 2004)).
               Here, Oﬃcer Brewer and SA Bigham had a “particularized
        and objective basis for suspecting” that Holland was violating the
        conditions of his release. When the search occurred, they knew
        that four erotic images of minor boys were uploaded from an In-
        stagram account traced to the phone number on Holland’s driver’s
        license and that the Instagram account’s username, “Yung In Atl,”
        signiﬁed that the user lived in Atlanta, where Holland lives. They
        also knew that Holland had a history of possessing child pornogra-
        phy and a sexual interest in minor boys; that he had a high risk of
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        22-11817               Opinion of the Court                         11

        reoﬀending, as shown by his psychosexual evaluation and criminal
        history; that in 2015 he used unauthorized devices and exchanged
        pornography with men from prison; and that in January 2017 he
        possessed seven unauthorized cell phones. Together, these facts
        reasonably warranted the search.
               As to the collective knowledge doctrine, suﬃcient commu-
        nication existed between SA Bigham and Oﬃcer Brewer to exam-
        ine their collective knowledge. Once SA Bigham believed Holland
        uploaded the images, she provided Oﬃcer Brewer with a synopsis
        of her investigation. Oﬃcer Brewer then gave SA Bigham infor-
        mation about Holland’s criminal history. Like the oﬃcers in Else,
        Oﬃcer Brewer and SA Bigham then had several follow‑up conver-
        sations to coordinate the search, which SA Bigham was on‑site for.
        See Esle, 743 F.2d at 1476.
               Holland’s argument that the Instagram images are not sex-
        ually oriented material prohibited by his conditions of supervised
        release fails. The images posted to Instagram, even if not them-
        selves sexually oriented, supported a reasonable suspicion that Hol-
        land possessed other material that was sexually oriented and that
        he was violating the terms of his supervised release.
                Holland’s staleness argument also fails. The staleness doc-
        trine requires that information supporting reasonable suspicion ex-
        ist at the time of the search. United States v. Touset, 890 F.3d 1227,
        1237–38 (11th Cir. 2018). That said, there is no rule or set time limit
        for when information becomes stale. Id. at 1238. We determine
        staleness by evaluating a case’s particular facts, including the time,
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        12                     Opinion of the Court                  22-11817

        the suspected crime’s nature, the accused’s habits, the character of
        the items sought, and the nature and function of the premises to
        be searched. Id.
                In child pornography cases, we have recognized that evi-
        dence is less susceptible to staleness. See id. This is so for two rea-
        sons. First, given the challenges in obtaining it, collectors of child
        pornography tend to hold onto their sexually explicit materials,
        rarely if ever disposing of them. See id. Second, because the mate-
        rial is stored electronically, it does not spoil or get consumed like
        other evidence and can remain on a device after deletion. See
        Touset, 890 F.3d at 1237–38. In Touset, we held that evidence of the
        defendant’s payments to a Western Union account linked to a
        phone number that was associated with an email address contain-
        ing child pornography “was not stale about a year and a half later.”
        See id.
               We are persuaded that the above reasoning applies here.
        The information connecting the Instagram account used to upload
        explicit images of prepubescent boys and the phone number on
        Holland’s driver’s license was not stale over a year later when Of-
        ﬁcer Brewer searched Holland’s home.
                                             IV.
               Holland also argues for the ﬁrst time on appeal that the term
        of his supervised release prohibiting him from possessing sexually
        oriented material is void for vagueness. Even so, the very nature
        of the photographs uploaded to Instagram—independent of their
        status as a violation of that term of his supervised release—
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        22-11817              Opinion of the Court                       13

        combined with the other factors discussed above, does not negate
        reasonable suspicion that Holland was violating other terms of his
        supervised release, like accessing the internet and possessing unau-
        thorized cellphones. So, the exact deﬁnition of “sexually oriented
        material” as a violation of Holland’s compliance contract is irrele-
        vant to whether the oﬃcers had reasonable suspicion. Thus, this
        Court need not consider Holland’s argument that the term “sex-
        ually oriented material” is unconstitutionally vague.
                                        V.
               Because the totality of circumstances and collective
        knowledge of the oﬃcers support a reasonable suspicion that Hol-
        land was violating the conditions of his supervised release at the
        time the search was executed, the District Court’s judgment is
              AFFIRMED.