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ME: Officer exceeded scope of consent look at computer by searching for .avi files

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Through creative police work, the police came to defendant’s house looking for a person who used another person’s wireless Internet connection. He did not tell the defendant that he was looking for child pornography. Defendant admitted the officer and let him on the computer to look at the screen and admitted using a neighbor’s wireless. The officer then searched for .avi files and found apparent child pornography just from the file names, and they were not opened on the computer. The use of deception did not render the consent by action invalid. However, the officer exceeded the scope of the consent to check about wireless usage when he looked at the .avi files, and that was suppressed. State v. Bailey, 2010 ME 15, 2010 Me...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on March 09, 2010 (boomark / email).