Exclusionary Rule – Good Faith Exception

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: United States of America v. Neil C. Kienast, et al. 

Case No.: 17-1840;

Officials: RIPPLE, SYKES, and BARRETT, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Exclusionary Rule – Good Faith Exception

In 2015, federal agents infiltrated a child pornography website called Playpen and deployed a computer program to identify Playpen’s users. This operation resulted in the successful prosecution of defendants all around the country, including Neil Kienast, Marcus Owens, and Braman Broy, whose appeals are consolidated before us. Kienast, Owens, and Broy, like many other defendants caught in this sting, argue that the warrant authorizing the Playpen searches was invalid and that the fruit of those searches—the defendants’ identities—should therefore have been suppressed. Every circuit that has considered the suppression argument has rejected it, and so do we. Even assuming that these digital searches violated the Fourth Amendment, the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies. We affirm all three judgments.

Affirmed

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Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.