Sotomayor Explains Computer Search Case
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor fielded questions from Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., during the continuation of her confirmation hearing Wednesday about her perspectives on U.S. v. Falso, a recently decided case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit involving the legality of evidence obtained in a home search -- specifically the search of a defendant's computer. Sotomayor, who was on the panel, held that police did not have probable cause because there were no allegations that the defendant, Jon David Falso, actually possessed child pornography or subscribed to any such Web site. Concerning Falso's past crimes, the court held that the correlation was not strong enough.
Sotomayor said the case "presented a very complicated question" because there had been two cases addressing how much information a warrant had to contain in order for the police to search a defendant's computer. "I was looking at it in the backdrop of the conflict that it appeared to contain in our case law, and what our case law said was important for a police officer to share with a judge," she said. "I held that the acts violated the Constitution, but that the evidence could still be used, because the officers had -- there was in law a good-faith exception to the error in the warrant."
Read a longer summary about U.S. v. Falso written by the Electronic Privacy Information Center here and view the actual opinion here.
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