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Court Finds File Names are in Plain View; Looks at Consent, Inevitable Discovery and Independent Source Doctrines

By Candace Hom, Melinda Ghilardi, Nancy Rimmer, Sarah Gannett, Renee Pietropaolo and Tieffa Harper

In a lengthy c.p. opinion in U.S. v. Stabile, --- F.3d ----, 2011 WL 294036 (Feb. 1, 2011), the Third Circuit found the following: (1) Consent to a warrantless search by cohabitant who had common authority over the property, including seizure of hard drives in common area which were not password protected, was valid; (2) the search of entire contents of the hard drives was reasonable and was not required to be done on-site; (3) the subsequent revocation of cohabitant's consent by defendant was ineffective; (4) a three-month delay between seizure of hard drives and obtaining search warrant was not unreasonable given that property was turned over by consent, defendant did not request return of the property, and government's rationale for the delay was reasonable; (5) file names, which appeared when a folder on defendant?s hard drive was highlighted, indicating child pornography were in "plain view" during search for financial fraud evidence; and(6) although the plain view doctrine may not apply to the contents of those files, the independent source and inevitable discovery doctrines applied...continue to full post

Full post as published by Third Circuit Blog on February 08, 2011 (boomark / email).