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Criminal Law Keyed to Kennedy
State of South Dakota v. Todd David Linson
Citation:
896 N.W.2d 656 (2017)Facts
On March 3, 2013, police were dispatched to the defendant’s residence to investigate a report of possible child pornography found on a computer. The defendant’s wife and sister were at the residence when law enforcement arrived, and they directed the officers to a computer that required a password to access. When the defendant arrived home, he provided the login password so the officers were able to look at web browsing history. After discovering that he had searched for pornography using terms associated with child pornography and observing that several websites in the browser’s history contained child pornography, the officers decided took the computer.
Two user profiles were found on the computer. Forty-one images of possible child pornography were found in the profile belonging to the defendant. An additional 360 images of child pornography were found in the unallocated space of the computer.
The defendant was convicted of possessing child pornography. He appealed, arguing that associated images were found in the cache files of the computer and did not constitute possession.
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Topic Resources
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Elements of a Crime