Background
Dustin Hollis Campo pleaded guilty in 2011 to sexual abuse of a 14-year-old and two counts of attempted child molestation. After his prison sentence, he began lifetime probation in 2015. His offenses did not involve the internet, but his probation conditions restricted computer and internet use.
After a 2022 modification allowed social-media use subject to platform rules and probation monitoring, Campo recorded interactions with probation personnel, polygraphs, and counseling sessions and posted recordings to YouTube. One video recorded a female probation officer during a home visit, allegedly focusing on her clothed crotch; viewers posted sexualized comments. In 2025, the superior court added conditions barring recording inside court facilities, therapy and testing settings, and video-recording or disseminating videos of probation personnel, and ordered Campo to remove specified videos.
The Court’s Holding
The court treated Campo’s appeal as a special action, accepted jurisdiction, and granted partial relief. It held that probation authorities did not need first to allege a probation violation to impose the court-facility and therapy-recording restrictions because those restrictions did not add burdens beyond generally applicable rules and agreements already binding Campo.
The court upheld the ban on recording inside court facilities, including probation offices, because the restriction was viewpoint neutral and reasonable in a nonpublic forum. It also upheld the prohibition on recording or broadcasting therapy, counseling, testing, and polygraph sessions, finding it a valid content-neutral restriction that protected treatment privacy and polygraph integrity while leaving Campo able to discuss his experiences outside those settings.
But the court vacated the blanket ban on Campo video-recording and disseminating recordings of probation personnel in public places or his home. On the record presented, probation had not shown a reasonable nexus between that restriction and probation’s goals of rehabilitation and public safety. It also vacated the removal order as to the probation-officer video because the superior court made no findings establishing that the video was unprotected speech or that its removal satisfied the required nexus. The court remanded for further proceedings on that issue.
Key Takeaways
- Probationers retain protected speech rights, although probation conditions may restrict those rights when reasonably tied to rehabilitation or public safety.
- Arizona’s free-speech clause can provide broader protection than the First Amendment, and courts must begin with the Arizona Constitution when both are invoked.
- Generalized safety concerns and administrative inconvenience did not justify a blanket ban on Campo’s video-recording of probation personnel.
Why It Matters
The decision applies Arizona’s state constitutional free-speech framework to probation conditions and confirms that protected recording and online publication cannot be prospectively restricted without a record-based justification tied to probation’s legitimate objectives.
Courts and probation departments may protect court operations, treatment confidentiality, and testing integrity, but individualized speech restrictions require specific supporting findings.