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the Fourth Amendment and Federal Rule of drive until the FBI contacted him.
Criminal Procedure 41. Because the good faith
exception applies and the Government’s post- SA Jones requested that an investigation be
seizure delay did not violate the Fourth opened into the allegations, and SA Thomas
Amendment, we AFFIRM. Tedder was assigned the case. Shortly there-
after, SA Tedder began collaborating with
The FBI began investigating Jarman when Jason Department of Justice (“DOJ”) attorneys on the
Collins, the co-owner of a computer repair case.
store, called FBI Special Agent (“SA”) Larry
Jones in November 2007. Collins told SA Jones In January 2008, SA Tedder re-interviewed
that he suspected one of his customers had Collins. Collins gave SA Tedder the customer’s
child pornography on his hard drive. He said hard drive1 and told him generally the same
that the customer had purchased a new com- story he told SA Jones. This time, however,
puter and asked him to transfer the data from Collins identified the customer as Jarman. He
an old computer’s hard drive onto it and to also provided more detail about the video file
wipe the old hard drive clean. Collins’s part- he had seen. When he went through the hard
time employee, Charlie Wilson, performed the drive, Collins explained, he selected one sus-
transfer at the customer’s home. During the pected file and copied it to his computer to
transfer, Wilson, who could see the file names, view. That file contained a grainy image of an
but not the actual files being copied, noticed adult male sodomizing a pre-pubescent child
file names which appeared to indicate child whom Collins believed to be under the age of
pornography. Wilson told Collins what he had twelve. After viewing that file, Collins stopped
seen, and Collins asked Wilson to bring the old looking at the drive and contacted the FBI.
hard drive back to the store. Notably, Collins now claimed that he believed
that Wilson copied all of the old data—includ-
Collins inspected that hard drive, finding sev- ing the possible child pornography—to
eral file names suggestive of child pornography Jarman’s new computer, even though he had
that he could not open and a video file in the previously stated that the video file containing
root directory depicting a male performing possible child pornography was not transferred
anal sex on a prepubescent male child. Collins to the new computer. SA Tedder testified that
did not tell SA Jones the names of any of the he asked Collins about this inconsistency and
alleged child pornography computer files. But that Collins stood by his new conclusion.
he told SA Jones that he did not believe that the
video file had been transferred to the new 1 The district court suppressed the evidence
computer because it was on the hard drive’s found on this hard drive, holding that “the gov-
root directory. At the end of the interview, SA ernment’s yearlong, warrantless seizure of [it]
Jones asked Collins to keep the customer’s hard was unreasonable, and thus, violated the
26 www.texaspoliceassociation.com • 866-997-8282 Texas Police Journal
