United States v. Mitchell

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, acting in an undercover capacity, purchased access to a child-pornography website. The agent’s credit-card statement displayed a charge to a bill-payment service. Peter Mitchell (defendant) had two credit-card charges to that service. On February 22, 2007, ICE agent Thomas West, accompanied by a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent, went to Mitchell’s home. Mitchell acknowledged that his desktop computer contained child pornography. West removed the hard drive from the computer and seized it. West left town on February 25, 2007, to attend a training and returned on March 12, 2007. The FBI agent who participated in the search did not secure a warrant during West’s absence. West applied for and obtained a search warrant for Mitchell’s hard drive on March 15, 2007, 21 days after the initial seizure. The 23-page supporting affidavit contained mostly boilerplate language and only three double-spaced pages of original content. Child-pornography images were found on Mitchell’s hard drive. Mitchell pleaded guilty to receiving electronic images of child pornography. On appeal, Mitchell argued that the evidence obtained from his hard drive should have been suppressed because of the government’s unreasonable delay in obtaining a warrant after seizing the drive. West’s explanation for the delay was that he did not believe there was a need for a search warrant while he was gone and that there was no sense of urgency because Mitchell had admitted that his hard drive contained child pornography.