State v. Ralph Resiner

Syllabus

The defendant appealed from a judgment of conviction for possession of child pornography. The defendant challenged the denial of his motion to suppress evidence seized from his home and argued that there was no probable cause to support the issuance of a search warrant. He also maintained that the trial justice should have granted his motion for a mistrial based on the prosecutor's reference to excluded evidence during his opening statement. The Supreme Court determined that the warrant was not supported by probable cause because the twelve-word description of the image referred to mere nudity, no still image or clip of the video was provided, and the warrant failed to link the hash value of the video file to known child pornography. The Court concluded that a judicial officer must have the proper tools to be able to independently assess whether there is probable cause to believe that an image is child pornography. Accordingly, the Court vacated the judgment of the Superior Court. Having vacated the judgment of the Superior Court based on the defendant's first argument, the Supreme Court did not reach the other issue raised by the defendant on appeal