Probable cause existed where teenager used images of CP to turn in his father

In United States v. Wilker, the court found that probable cause existed where the defendant's son took evidence of defendant's child pornography collection to the police. 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 144264 (N.D. Iowa). The evidence included two images and two VCR tapes alleged as being from a hidden camera kept in the defendant's bathroom. Going by the testimony of the son and the son's friend, law enforcement obtained a warrant to search the defendant's house.

The defendant argued that probable cause would not have existed if law enforcement had disclosed information regarding the son's credibility to the magistrate. In the interview, the son "admitted that he wished to live with his mother instead of Defendant, that he and Defendant often argued and that, just days before [the son] reported Defendant to the police, Defendant had threatened to send Stephen to a 'boys home.'" The court found this to be a non-issue because the son "was a known informant and police could have held him accountable," and "he had 'an exceptionally strong basis of knowledge'" because he had personally discovered the images and tapes.

A second argument against probable cause concerned the fact that the son had told the officer he had not seen child pornography on the defendant's computer in at least a year, and thus probable cause did not "exist when [the] warrant [was] issued" with regard to the computer. However, because of the other evidence, it was reasonable to assume that the defendant "had used his computer in the past to store child pornography," and it should have been searched.