Search and Seizure — search warrants — staleness

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U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit

Criminal

Search and Seizure — search warrants — staleness

Where a child alleged that the defendant had molested and taken nude photographs of her five years earlier, the search warrant was not stale.

“The facts presented to the issuing judge distinguish this case from Prideaux-Wentz and demonstrate a likelihood of retention that was greater than could be expected in the normal child pornography case. Not only was Carroll the producer of the child pornography sought, but the images were of the bare genitals of the victim, whom he had personally molested. While pornographic images of anonymous children could be replaced with images of other anonymous children, Carroll’s images of the eight-year-old victim were irreplaceable to him. Under these circumstances, it was fair for the issuing judge to infer that Carroll would highly value the images of the victim and retain them on some type of digital media for a very long time.”

Affirmed.

13-2600 U.S. v. Carroll

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Magnus-Stinson, J., Kapala, J.