Officer Johnson was contacted by Wendy who related that drug deals had been going on for the last six months at Will's house next door.   Wendy described seeing men bringing bricks of white powder wrapped in cellophane up a hill behind Will's house and then loading them in a back room of the residence. Wendy related that these shipments would arrive every Thursday morning around 2AM. Officer Johnson had no previous contact with Wendy. However, with Wendy's permission, Officer Johnson placed a voice amplification device on her back deck designed to magnify any conversations that might take place on Will's property.  And sure enough, on the next Thursday at 2 AM, four men arrived in a truck at the bottom of the hill and transported bricks of white powder just as Wendy had related. Officer Johnson was able to hear on the voice amplification device one of the men say that "there are 10 kilos of coke left to stack in the room."   To get a better view of things, Officer Johnson hid behind a tree on Will's property to get a better view of the product as the last of the cocaine was being brought up the hill. At that moment Will came out the back door and indicated that he had counted the inventory and would make entries on his computer and verify with his supplier that the product was received. Officer Johnson then quickly returned to the station to make out a warrant to search Will's house.  The warrant specified that the search was for cocaine on the premises but failed to include the address of Will's house.  However, Officer Johnson noticed the error and cross-referenced Will's address in the affidavit.  The warrant specified that the search would also include the computer in Will's house in order to obtain information relating to the inventory of cocaine and any communications between Will and his cocaine suppliers. A superior court judge in Orange County carefully scrutinized the warrant, the affidavit and the warrant application and approved the warrant. The warrant and affidavit were then served on Will and the cocaine and computer were seized. In searching the files in Will's computer, the forensic detective conducting the search found not only the information relating to the cocaine transactions, but also came upon illegal child pornography in one of the files. Assume that the facts leading up to the submission of the warrant were described in the affidavit. 

Discuss all legal issues relating to.

 (1) the validity of the warrant regarding the search of the house; and

 (2) the admissibility of the illegal child pornography found during the computer search.

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

1 Validity of the Warrant Regarding the Search of the House The validity of a search warrant depends on several factors including the sufficiency of t... View the full answer