Brief Summary: Defendant Donald Sager was charged with knowingly possessing and transporting child pornography based on evidence seized from a personal computer. Sager moved to suppress the evidence, alleging that the police officers who conducted a warrentless search of the computer did not have valid consent to do so.
Facts: The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received two complaints that an individual had posted comments in an America Online chat room that indicated a sexual interest in children. In the online profile associated with the AOL screen name, the individual said that he enjoyed swimming at the Elkhart YMCA. Mitch Kajzer, Commander of the St. Joseph County Prosecutor's High Tech Crimes Unit, discovered the same screen name on Myspace, and downloaded a photo of the individual that he had posted to his MySpace page. Kajzer took the photo to the Elkhart YMCA, where it was identified as a picture of Donald Sager.
Sager was listed in the Indiana Sex Offender Registry, but the system showed two addresses for him. Along with several other officers, Kajzer went to the first of the two addresses to see if they could get permission to preview Sager's computer for possible evidence. Sager was not home, but his sister Carol Daron was. She told the officers that Sager lived rent-free in their basement and that she had bought a computer for him to use down there. Kajzer asked for permission to examine the computer. Daron never refused outright, but asked several times if she was required to do so. Kajzer said no, but added that the investigation would continue. Daron ultimately agreed to allow the examination, and took the officers into the basement through a door at the back of the house.
The door to the basement could be locked with a slide bolt on either side, but was not that morning. The basement itself was divided into several rooms, none of which had doors. The computer was in a small room located on the other side of Sager's bedroom. There was no password on the computer (although there was a password for the AOL account). Sager typically ate alone in the basement, but Daron frequently came downstairs to clean and collect Sager's laundry. She said that Sager was the only one who used the computer.
During his preview of the computer, Kajzer discovered a nude photo of Sager taken with the computer's webcam and several images of child pornography. Kajzer told Daron that he was seizing the hard drive as evidence, and asked her to have Sager contact him.
Issue(s): Whether Daron's consent to the search of the computer was voluntary, and whether she had sufficient common authority over the computer to permit the search.
Decision: Yes on both issues. Daron's consent was voluntary, and Kajzer reasonably relied on her apparent authority to consent to the search of the computer.
Reasoning: In determining whether Daron's consent was voluntary, the court applied a "totality of the circumstances" test. Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218 (1973). In this case, the court concluded that Daron had sufficient intelligence to understand and respond to Kajzer's request. Daron was not detained, and there was no physical coercion involved.
As for authority, the court pointed out that given her ownership of the computer, Daron could have retrieved it from the basement and allowed Kajzer to examine it upstairs without raising any concerns about Sager's expectation of privacy in the basement. Nonetheless, the court concluded that the officers reasonably believed that Daron had sufficient common authority over the basement to permit the officers to enter and conduct their examination there. Daron was in the habit of entering the basement when Sager was not there, and although the basement was Sager's living space, it also housed equipment necessary to the functioning of the entire house. In addition, there was no password required to gain access to the illegal images on the computer's hard drive.
The motion to suppress was denied. |
