State v. Castagnola
| Decision Date | 28 April 2015 |
| Docket Number | No. 2013–0781.,2013–0781. |
| Citation | 145 Ohio St.3d 1,2015 Ohio 1565,46 N.E.3d 638 |
| Parties | The STATE of Ohio, Appellee, v. CASTAGNOLA, Appellant. |
| Court | Ohio Supreme Court |
Sherri Bevan Walsh, Summit County Prosecuting Attorney, and Heaven DiMartino, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for appellee.
Russell S. Bensing, for appellant.
{¶ 1} In this discretionary appeal from the Ninth District Court of Appeals, we consider whether a search-warrant affiant's undisclosed evidentiary inference stated as an empirical fact usurped the inference-drawing authority of the magistrate who issued the warrant in reliance on the affidavit. We also consider the application of the particularity requirement of the Fourth Amendment to the search of a computer. For the reasons set forth below, we hold that the search warrant at issue in this case was invalid and that the evidence obtained in executing the warrant must be suppressed. We therefore reverse the judgment of the appellate court.
{¶ 2} David Maistros is the law director and prosecutor for the city of Twinsburg, in Summit County. In April 2010, Maistros charged appellant, Nicholas Castagnola, with selling alcohol to minors, a first-degree misdemeanor. Two months later, on June 15, 2010, Maistros discovered that his family vehicles had been damaged and egged.
{¶ 3} On June 27, a police source known as Source May showed Twinsburg patrolman Alan Ternosky a series of text messages that he had received from Castagnola bragging about having damaged Maistros's vehicles. After reviewing those messages, Ternosky had Source May wear a concealed recording device and record a conversation with Castagnola at Castagnola's home. In the recorded conversation, Castagnola admitted that he and Zach Downer had damaged and egged Maistros's vehicles. He added that he had had to "look up" Maistros's address on court records.
{¶ 5} The affidavit states that any items found would be seized and used as evidence in prosecuting the crimes of retaliation, criminal trespassing, criminal damaging, and possession of criminal tools. In the section titled "This Knowledge Is Based on the Following Facts," the affidavit sets forth the facts that led the detective to believe that evidence of the crimes charged would be found in the items sought to be seized.
{¶ 6} The affidavit states that approximately 25 incidents of criminal mischief had occurred within the prior two months involving intentional damage to vehicles in Twinsburg and Reminderville. Thereafter, the affidavit quotes the following text messages that Source May received from Castagnola on June 24 and June 25:
{¶ 7} The affidavit states that on June 28, Source May agreed to go to Castagnola's home while wearing a concealed recording device. It states that during the recorded conversation with Source May, Castagnola admitted that he and Downer had damaged Maistros's cars and a Reminderville police car.
{¶ 8} In lieu of attaching the recording of the conversation or a transcript of the recording to his search-warrant affidavit, the detective paraphrased the exchange between Source May and Castagnola as follows:
[Castagnola] states that that's some funny shit though isn't it? Go to his house and knock off his shit. He was so pissed off today in court. * * * Castagnola then says that he found Maistros online in the clerk of courts because he [Maistros] got a parking ticket several years ago. Castagnola said that he * * * went through Maistros's mailbox to confirm that Maistros did live at the address he found for him online.
{¶ 9} The detective did not state in the search-warrant affidavit the Internet-access capability or other capabilities of Castagnola's cell phone. Nor did the search-warrant affidavit provide information, beyond the "online" inference, to indicate that Castagnola had conducted an online search for Maistros's address or that a computer that was used to conduct such a search was located in Castagnola's residence.
{¶ 10} After reviewing the search-warrant affidavit, a judge of the Stow Municipal Court issued the search warrant. The warrant repeated the affidavit's description of the items to be searched for and the affidavit's statement that if the items were found, they would be seized and used as evidence in prosecuting the alleged crimes.
{¶ 11} The execution of the search warrant led to the seizure of numerous items, including two computers, one of which had not been used in two years.
{¶ 12} Natasha Branam, a forensic cyber-crimes analyst at the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation ("BCI"), examined Castagnola's computers. She later testified that Castagnola's computer "was brought in for [a case involving] menacing, threatening, and intimidation." Initially she reviewed the case synopsis and the search warrant, which said that Castagnola had obtained Maistros's address online. Branam performed her analysis by making a copy of the hard drive of the recently used computer. She then used a forensic software program, that "go[es] through documents, images, videos" on the hard drive. She testified that initially, she was "looking for any evidence of intimidation of David Maistros * * * and anything associated with that." She searched for the name "David Maistros" using her software program, without result. However, Branam testified that she later found data on David Maistros in the computer's "unallocated space," which is "the space where deleted data goes."
{¶ 13} Branam then "went to the images to find images associated with court websites." She explained that the "My Image" tab Under this tab, Branam could see virtual images not only of court websites but of all the websites that had been visited using that computer and all the pictures saved on the computer. As soon as she clicked on the "My Image" tab, the screen filled with images that she thought might be child pornography. She stopped her investigation and sought another warrant.
{¶ 14} A Twinsburg police detective obtained a second warrant to search the contents of the computers for evidence relating to child pornography. The evidence from the search resulted in Castagnola's indictment in September 2010 for ten counts of pandering sexually oriented material involving a minor, fourth-degree-felony offenses.
{¶ 15} BCI reported its findings on November 4, 2010. The report says, "The two (2) HTML documents that were recovered from unallocated space show information about David Maistros' parking violation that occurred on 9/16/2002; the contents of these documents match the text available upon the Stow Municipal Court website."
{¶ 16} Regarding the pandering charges, the report discloses that the search based on the second search warrant revealed over a thousand videos and images of suspected child pornography. In December 2010, Castagnola filed a motion to suppress, arguing that the first search warrant was not supported by probable cause, because nothing on which the affidavit was based suggested that there was a computer in Castagnola's home, let alone that a computer in his home concealed evidence of a crime. Moreover, at the hearing on the motion, he asserted that he had never used the term "online" in his conversation with Source May and thus the detective's use of the term in the affidavit was an unwarranted inference drawn by the detective, and only the neutral magistrate is allowed to draw inferences. Therefore, Castagnola argued, the officers' reliance on the first warrant was unreasonable. Since the first search warrant led to the second search warrant, Castagnola reasoned, all evidence resulting from both warrants must be suppressed as fruit of the poisonous tree.
{¶ 17} At the suppression hearing, the detective testified that a search-warrant affidavit has two parts: the first part tells the court what the police are looking for, and the second part, titled "This Knowledge Is Based on the Following Facts," tells the court the facts that the police believe provide probable cause for the search.
{¶ 18} When asked what specific facts in the affidavit provided probable cause for seizing and searching Castagnola's computers, the detective referred to the following statement in the affidavit: "Castagnola [said] he found Maistros online in the clerk of courts because he got a...
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