Gerard F. Stellwagen v. Florida

This case concerns the Fourth Amendment limits on warrants to search a home and seize all of its digital contents based on a single, months-old image of child pornography attributed to an email account. The lower courts are openly divided on each of the following recurring questions:

1. Staleness. Whether a single, isolated transmission of child pornography – here, one image sent roughly eight months before the warrant issued – becomes categorically “not stale” for purposes of probable cause simply because digital files are capable of indefinite storage, even where the affidavit contains no evidence that the suspect is a “collector” who retains such material.

2. Nexus to the residence. Whether evidence that an online child-pornography offense was committed through an email account associated with a suspect, without evidence tying that activity to the suspect’s home (such as an IP address for the device used), establishes the “fair probability” that evidence will be found in the home that the Fourth Amendment requires.

3. Particularity and overbreadth. Whether, in light of Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373 (2014), the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement permits a warrant to authorize the seizure and forensic search of every electronic device and all data in a residence based on probable cause as to a single identified file.