Appeals Court Upholds Springdale Search

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

— The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday upheld a search and sentencing enhancement involving a man who had child pornography at a Springdale car dealership.

Legal Lingo

Good Faith

The use of honesty and best efforts in dealings with others. In criminal law, if officers had reasonable, good faith belief that they were acting according to legal authority, such as by relying on a search warrant that is later found to have been legally defective, the illegally seized evidence is admissible.

Source: U.S. Legal and Cornell University Law School

William Cannon pleaded guilty last year in federal court to two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor and two counts of receiving child pornography. The plea was conditioned on Cannon’s right to appeal the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained during a search.

Cannon also appealed an upward departure in sentencing based on a video containing sado-masochistic content.

Cannon was sentenced to 840 months in prison, including an enhancement based on a video Cannon made of sadistic or masochistic conduct.

Cannon contended Springdale police illegally entered rooms he used at an EZ Credit car dealership.

Cannon’s rooms were discovered during a routine fire inspection July 14, 2010. Cannon, a car detailer and night watchman, had pictures of nude young boys on the walls, a collection of bound, blindfolded and mutilated and naked dolls hanging from the ceiling and what appeared to be pornography production equipment.

Fire officials called police who entered the rooms through an open door, discovered some of what was there, then left and sought a warrant.

The warrant produced pictures of nude children, computers, videos and other items. One computer contained thousands of images of sexually explicit pictures of children and revealed multiple visits to child pornography sites. There was also a video Cannon had created of a minor female engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

Cannon claimed the initial warrantless entry by police violated his rights because he had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the rooms, where he was living part-time, and didn’t give consent to search.

He also argued there was no justification for police to enter the rooms.

A judge disagreed, ruling the items seized shouldn’t be excluded as evidence because the warrant was based on an independent source and police acted in good faith.

The court of appeals agreed, ruling suppression would only have been appropriate if officers had been dishonest or reckless when seeking the warrant or intentionally misled the judge who issued the warrant.

“The good-faith exception applies in this case because it was objectively reasonable when they first entered the rooms for Detectives Al Barrios and Mike Hignite to believe that they simply were entering rooms that were part of a car dealership business, EZ Credit,” according to the opinion.

“The detectives responded to a call about a potential child pornography operation at a car dealership, not a residence. When the detectives arrived at EZ Credit, it was open for business, there were cars for sale on the lot, and there were both employees and customers present. EZ Credit also is located in an area zoned for business use, where residential use is prohibited.”

Based on the findings of fact, the appeals court agreed with the district court the detectives reasonably could have believed they were entering another part of the car dealership, not a private residence, with EZ Credit’s consent.

The appeals court said as a result, the detectives’ pre-warrant conduct was “close enough to the line of validity” to make their belief in the validity of the subsequent warrant “objectively reasonable.”

The appeals court also upheld Cannon’s sentencing enhancement saying the video showed the result of Cannon inflicting pain upon the victim.