People v. Robert S. Prinzing

Robert Prinzing (defendant) was indicted for possessing child pornography. Prinzing moved to suppress the evidence found on his computer. Detective Keith Smith testified that Prinzing’s credit card had been used to make online child-pornography purchases and a fraudulent charge had been reported around the time of the purchases. Smith went to Prinzing’s home and told Prinzing he was investigating credit-card fraud. Prinzing said he occasionally used the card for Internet purchases. Smith asked whether he could use a special program to search Prinzing’s computer to determine how Prinzing’s credit-card information might have been stolen. Prinzing consented. Smith ran a program that brought up images of websites Prinzing had visited. Smith maintained he was looking for images with the Visa logo but found child-pornography images shortly after starting the scan. Prinzing testified that the detectives told him they were investigating fraud, questioned him about his credit cards, and asked to check his computer for viruses or anything that might capture keystrokes and steal his credit-card information. Prinzing was knowledgeable about computers and said he had firewalls in place. After the third request, Prinzing agreed to let Smith check his computer. Smith began looking at images. Prinzing never saw images with the Visa logo; he only saw images downloaded from the Internet or his camera. Because Prinzing’s malware program brought up executable files and not images, Prinzing thought it was odd that Smith was looking only at images, but he did not say anything. Smith told Prinzing he had found child-pornography images and seized the computer. Prinzing’s suppression motion was denied. Prinzing was convicted and argued on appeal that the police exceeded the scope of his consent to the search.