State v. Sawyer

Citations

• 335 Conn. 29

Syllabus

Convicted, on a conditional plea of nolo contendere, of the crime of posses- sion of child pornography in the second degree, the defendant appealed, claiming, inter alia, that the warrant authorizing a search of the defen- dant's residence and ultimately leading to the seizure of more than 400 images and some videos of suspected child pornography was supported by probable cause. The affidavit in support of the application for the search warrant provided that one of the defendant's roommates called the police after he observed the defendant looking at his computer screen, which displayed a photograph of what appeared to be an eight to nine year boy standing naked with no pubic hair and his genitals exposed, followed by a photograph of a naked girl with very small breasts and her hand covering her genital area. The two photographs appeared to be in a slide projection program, and there appeared to be other thumbnail photographs that were too small to identify. After the defendant was arrested on the basis of the seized images and videos, he filed a motion to suppress, claiming, inter alia, that there was no probable cause to search his residence for child pornography. The motion to suppress was denied. On the defendant's appeal from the judgment of conviction, held: 1. The court issuing the search warrant correctly found that there was probable cause to search the defendant's residence because that court reasonably could have determined, on the basis of the totality of the circumstances described in the search warrant affidavit and the reason- able inferences drawn therefrom, that there was a substantial chance that a search of the defendant's residence would uncover evidence of possession of child pornography: the descriptions in the affidavit of the two photographs of nude children provided a fair probability that the defendant was in possession of lascivious images of children, as the court could have inferred from those descriptions that the defen- dant possessed