State v. Pauli, A19-1886
| Docket Number | A19-1886 |
| Decision Date | 24 August 2022 |
| Citation | 979 N.W.2d 39 |
| Parties | STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Tyler Ray PAULI, Appellant. |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
979 N.W.2d 39
STATE of Minnesota, Respondent,
v.
Tyler Ray PAULI, Appellant.
A19-1886
Supreme Court of Minnesota.
Filed: August 24, 2022
Keith Ellison, Attorney General, Peter Magnuson, Assistant Attorney General, Saint Paul, Minnesota; and Mark Rubin, Saint Louis County Attorney, Duluth, Minnesota, for respondent.
Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Laura Heinrich, Assistant Public Defender, Saint Paul, Minnesota, for appellant.
Scott M. Flaherty, Taft, Stettinius & Hollister LLP, Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Jennifer Lynch, Electronic Frontier Foundation, San Francisco, California; and Teresa Nelson, American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Jennifer S. Granick, American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, San Francisco, California; for amici curiae Electronic Frontier Foundation, American Civil Liberties Union, and American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota.
OPINION
McKEIG, Justice.
Appellant Tyler Ray Pauli was charged with four counts of possession of pornographic work involving minors in violation of Minn. Stat. § 617.247, subd. 4(a) (2020), after law enforcement officers discovered digital child pornography files stored in his personal online cloud storage account.1 Pauli filed a motion to suppress, arguing that the warrantless search of his online cloud storage account was unconstitutional under both the U.S. and Minnesota constitutions. The district court denied Pauli's suppression motion. Pauli waived his right to a jury trial and proceeded with a stipulated facts trial under Minn. R. Crim. P. 26.01, subd. 4. The district court found him guilty. In an unpublished decision, the court of appeals affirmed his convictions, finding that Pauli did not have an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in his online cloud storage account. State v. Pauli , No. A19-1886, 2020 WL 7019328, at *3 (Minn. App. Nov. 30, 2020). We conclude that, even assuming that Pauli had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cloud storage account, the government's search of his account was lawful under the private search doctrine. In reaching this conclusion, we further hold that Pauli, as the party seeking to suppress the evidence, bore the burden to show that the private party was acting on behalf of the government, and further hold that the Minnesota Rule of Evidence do not apply with full force during suppression hearings. Thus, we affirm the court of appeals decision, but on different grounds.
FACTS
Appellant Tyler Ray Pauli had a personal online cloud storage account with Dropbox. Dropbox is a private company that provides online accounts for individuals and businesses for the storage and sharing of electronic files, including photos, documents, and videos. Dropbox's terms of service contain a warning that the private company "may disclose your information to third parties if we determine that such disclosure is reasonably necessary to (a) comply with the law; (b) protect any person from death or serious bodily injury; (c) prevent fraud or abuse of Dropbox or our users; or (d) protect Dropbox's property rights." Dropbox's acceptable use policy states:
[Y]ou must not even try to do any of the following in connection with the Services ... publish or share materials that are unlawfully pornographic or indecent, or that contain extreme acts of violence ... violate the law in any way, including storing, publishing or sharing material that's fraudulent, defamatory, or misleading.
Dropbox's privacy policy states: "[s]tewardship of your data is critical to us and a responsibility that we embrace. We believe that our users’ data should receive the same legal protections regardless of whether it's stored on our services or on their home computer's hard drive."
On October 24, 2016, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (the Center) received a report of suspected child pornography possession through their CyberTipline.2 A report submitted by an employee of Dropbox contained 63 images of suspected child pornography found in an account registered to a Yahoo e-mail address. A representative from the Center reviewed 2 of the 63 images and determined that the uploaded files contained child pornography. The Center representative then forwarded its findings and report to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) for further investigation and possible criminal charges.
On November 17, 2016, the BCA received the Center's report of suspected child pornography on a Dropbox account and assigned Special Agent John Nordberg to investigate. Special Agent Nordberg confirmed that the files from Dropbox contained child pornography and connected the Yahoo e-mail address associated with the Dropbox account to Pauli.
On January 18, 2017, Special Agent Nordberg applied for a warrant to search other data and files stored in Pauli's Dropbox account. In the search warrant application, Special Agent Nordberg provided summaries of some of the child pornography files and requested to search the entirety of Pauli's Dropbox account to look for any additional child pornography stored there. A district court judge authorized the warrant, which was subsequently served on Dropbox.
On April 20, 2017, Special Agent Nordberg went to Pauli's residence to execute another search warrant for Pauli's electronic devices and ask Pauli questions about his Dropbox account. When questioned, Pauli admitted to Special Agent Nordberg that he used his Dropbox account to store child pornography images. Special Agent Nordberg seized a cell phone, laptop computer, and tablet from Pauli's residence.
On May 19, 2017, Special Agent Nordberg reviewed 866 files received from Dropbox in response to the search warrant issued in January. Special Agent Nordberg concluded that 156 of the files contained child pornography videos and submitted the files to the Center's Child Victim Identification Program. On June 27, 2017, Special Agent Nordberg received a report from the Center indicating that 21 of the files contained identified child victims.
Based on the BCA's investigation, the State charged Pauli with four counts of possession of pornographic work involving minors in violation of Minn. Stat. § 617.247, subd. 4(a). On December 19, 2017, Pauli moved to suppress the evidence acquired from his Dropbox account. Pauli argued that the Center is a government actor and its review of the data files provided by Dropbox was an unlawful warrantless search. He also argued that the Dropbox terms of service did not make his
expectation of privacy unreasonable. The State argued that the Fourth Amendment does not apply because Pauli does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the child pornography files stored in his Dropbox account. In the alternative, the State contended that the private search doctrine applied to the initial search of Pauli's account conducted by a Dropbox employee. Because the subsequent review by the Center did not exceed the search performed by Dropbox, the State argued there was no Fourth Amendment violation.
After reviewing the briefs and evidence submitted by the parties on the suppression motion, the district court was "unable at this time to determine the lynchpin issue." The district court found that "a large factual divide" existed as to what procedures were used by Dropbox and the Center. Due to the lack of clarity, the district court found that "it would be inappropriate ... to decide the factual issues." The district court denied Pauli's motion to suppress the evidence based on a "lack of necessary information," but allowed Pauli to renew the motion upon the development of new information.
Pauli filed a motion to reconsider. The parties agreed to reopen the record, which the district court approved. The State submitted a letter from Dropbox that broadly described the procedures used by the private company when responding to reports of potential child sexual abuse content. The letter stated that "all apparent child pornography is manually reviewed by a member of the content safety team before it is reported to [the Center]."3 The State also submitted a summary of multiple conversations between the prosecutor in this case and legal counsel for Dropbox.
On February 8, 2019, legal counsel for Dropbox objected to a subpoena duces tecum sent by Pauli on procedural grounds, but stated that "[i]f you were to comply with these procedures, Dropbox would not have responsive records in any event ... Dropbox does not have records of who may have reviewed any content associated with the account in question or who submitted the report in question to [the Center]."
On April 17, 2019, the district court issued an order denying Pauli's motion to reconsider its ruling on his suppression motion. The district court found that although Pauli likely had a subjective expectation of privacy in his Dropbox account, based on Dropbox's terms of service, his expectation was not reasonable. But even if Pauli had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his Dropbox account, the district court found that the private search doctrine applied because the government's subsequent searches did not expand the initial private search of files by the Dropbox employee.
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