Adams v. State
Decision Date | 07 February 2020 |
Docket Number | CR-18-1083 |
Citation | 316 So.3d 260 |
Parties | Christopher Allen ADAMS v. STATE of Alabama |
Court | Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals |
Kyle J. Henderson, Daphne, for appellant.
Steve Marshall, atty. gen., and Holly M. Walterscheld, asst. atty. gen., for appellee.
The appellant, Christopher Allen Adams, pleaded guilty to possessing obscene material, a violation of § 13A-12-192(b), Ala. Code 1975, and was sentenced to 120 months in prison. The trial court split the sentence and directed that Adams be given credit for the time he had served in jail and that he serve one additional day and be released on probation for five years. Before pleading guilty, Adams specifically reserved his right to appeal the trial court's ruling denying his motion to suppress. See Green v. State, 200 So. 3d 677, 679 (Ala. Crim. App. 2015) ().
Adams was indicted in November 2018 for four counts of possessing obscene material that contained "visual depictions of a person under the age of 17." (C. 20-23.)1 Adams moved to suppress the evidence obtained from the search of his electronic devices because, he argued, the information in the warrant affidavit was stale. He further argued that the information was not reliable because law enforcement had no firsthand knowledge regarding the information and did not corroborate that information. The trial court denied the motion to suppress. This appeal followed.
At the suppression hearing, Agent Britney Roberts, an officer with the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency ("ALEA"), testified that ALEA had received a cyber tip on August 23, 2016, from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children ("NCMEC")2 regarding child pornography. The tip, forwarded to NCMEC from the company operating the Internet Web site Chatstep.com,3 stated that one of its users was in possession of child pornography. She testified that NCMEC was required by federal law to report "anything that comes across as a child exploitation." (R. 12.) The tip, she said, contained the name of the company operating Chatstep.com, which had provided the information to NCMEC, the Internet protocol "IP" address "of the individual using that website that [the owner of Chatstep.com] suspected to be involved with child exploitation or child pornography, and also the user name on the website that the suspect used at the time." (R. 13.) The tip, Agent Roberts said, also contained the actual images. She reviewed those images, she said, and determined that they were child pornography. Agent Roberts further testified that when the tip was received it was submitted to an analyst at ALEA and that a subpoena was issued to the Internet service provider that serviced the IP address. ALEA found that the IP address was registered to Dorothy Adams, and it obtained her physical address. ALEA obtained a search warrant for Adams's premises. Agent Roberts testified that she had obtained approximately 50 warrants using the same protocol as she used in this case. (R. 16.) In all 50 cases, she said, the NCMEC tip had never been found to be unreliable.
Agent Roberts stated the following in the affidavit to support the issuance of the search warrant:
(C. 128.)
The search warrant was executed on November 2, 2016, approximately three months after the owner of Chatstep.com discovered child pornography on its site.4 When police executed the warrant, two individuals, Christopher Adams and his wife Dorothy Adams, were discovered inside the residence. Agent Roberts said that the officers specifically looked for any electronic devices that could contain child pornography. During the search, Agent Roberts said, images of child pornography were easily found on Christopher Adams's iPhone and similar images were later discovered on his computer. In total, approximately 360 images were retrieved from Adams's devices. After a lengthy discussion, the trial court denied the motion to suppress the images.
"This Court reviews de novo a circuit court's decision on a motion to suppress evidence when the facts are not in dispute." State v. Skaggs, 903 So. 2d 180, 181 (Ala. Crim. App. 2004).
"The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, and it provides that search warrants shall be issued only upon a finding of probable cause." McIntosh v. State, 64 So. 3d 1142, 1145 (Ala. Crim. App. 2010).
Texas v. Brown, 460 U.S. 730, 742, 103 S.Ct. 1535, 75 L.Ed.2d 502 (1983). In determining whether there is probable cause to support the issuance of a warrant, we must evaluate the "totality of the circumstances" in each case. See Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 231-32, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983).
Adams first argues that the information in the cyber tip that was used to support the issuance of the warrant was not reliable because, he says, Agent Roberts had no firsthand knowledge of the information and did not corroborate the information.
Wilsher v. State, 611 So. 2d 1175, 1179 (Ala. Crim. App. 1992).
Alabama has not addressed the reliability of a cyber tip from an Internet company. However, other courts have found that similar tips are reliable and, in fact, are "presumed reliable." A Florida Court stated in State v. Woldridge, 958 So. 2d 455 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2007) :
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