The Sixth Circuit recently
released a ruling in a case, U.S. v. Charles Arthur Kinison, involved a man, Mr. Kinison, who began to affiliate with a group of pedophiles in Georgia that
sought to adopt children for the sole purpose of molesting them. Curiously,
Kinison had a girlfriend at the time and decided to share his interest in the
group with the woman. Going even further, Kinison texted back and forth with
his girlfriend, who admitted participated in the exchange, explaining his
interest in the plan and his love of child pornography. Kinison detailed his
favorite online sites and described some of the child pornography he had viewed
on the Internet.
Disturbed by Kinison’s behavior,
the girlfriend went to police who then downloaded thousands of pages of text
messages between the two from the girlfriend’s cell phone. She cooperated with
the ongoing police investigation, agreeing to meet with them on three different
occasions. The police asked her where Kinison had been viewing the child
pornography and she told them it was in his house. However, there was no real
evidence obtained by the police to prove that the girlfriend knew this as a
fact and was not simply guessing.
Based on the information from the
girlfriend and the text messages the police had downloaded, they were able to
get a warrant to search the man’s home. When the police arrived, Kinison had
just pulled into the driveway with a cell phone clearly out in the center
console of his vehicle. The police were able to secure another warrant for the
car, based on the phone being in plain view, and ultimately found child
pornography on Kinison’s home computer.
Kinison moved to suppress the
evidence seized during the search, arguing that the warrant failed to establish
probable cause to search his home and car based on the girlfriend’s incomplete
knowledge of where the pornography was being viewed. The district court granted
Kinison’s motion to suppress.
The case eventually made its way
to the Sixth Circuit which found that the girlfriend could be relied on as a
police informant because she was not anonymous and the text messages confirmed
there was a personal relationship between her and Kinison that gave her some
degree of knowledge on the subject. Moreover, the Sixth Circuit said her
statements were leant credibility because she was putting herself at risk of
criminal prosecution for having engaged in similar conversations with Kinison
about kidnapping or adopting a young child for the purpose of molestation.
The Court further found that
though the girlfriend’s statement about the location of the pornography may
have been a guess, it was an educated guess. The Court said that it’s widely
assumed when someone is engaged in such private behavior it would likely occur in
in the privacy of his or her own home. Furthermore, the Court found that the police
acted in good faith when seeking their warrant which should allow the search
even if it was based on a less than complete information.
The Sixth Circuit thus reversed
the lower court’s decision to grant Kinison’s motion to suppress and remanded
the case for reconsideration.
See
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