Background
Nicholas Peterson met a 15-year-old through an online virtual-reality game when he was 21. Using the Snapchat account “kingnoob9000,” Peterson engaged in sexually explicit conversations with the minor and exchanged sexually explicit images. After the minor’s family reported the communications, a Nebraska investigator obtained warrants from Sarpy County judges directing Snap and Google, both located in California, to produce account and subscriber records.
The records led investigators to Peterson’s residence in Kansas City, Missouri. The FBI then obtained and executed a federal warrant there, seized electronic devices containing child pornography, and interviewed Peterson. After the district court denied his motion to suppress, Peterson conditionally pleaded guilty to attempted production, receipt, and possession of child pornography and received 262 months in prison followed by lifetime supervised release.
The Court’s Holding
The Eighth Circuit affirmed the denial of Peterson’s suppression motion. Nebraska law expressly authorizes county judges to issue search warrants for service on corporations located inside or outside Nebraska. The Sarpy County judges therefore had territorial authority to issue the warrants to Snap and Google, and the warrants were not void under the Fourth Amendment.
The court rejected Peterson’s reliance on decisions applying Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41 to warrants issued by federal magistrate judges. The Nebraska warrants were issued by state judges exercising authority granted by state law, and the investigation’s later transfer to federal authorities did not retroactively subject those warrants to Rule 41. The court also held that, even if the warrants had been invalid, the Leon good-faith exception would apply because the investigator’s reliance on them was objectively reasonable and there was no evidence of bad faith or deficient probable cause.
Key Takeaways
- Nebraska law permits county judges to issue warrants for service on out-of-state corporations, including providers holding electronic account records.
- Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41’s territorial limits on federal magistrate judges did not govern warrants issued by Nebraska state judges.
- The investigator reasonably relied on the judicially approved warrants, independently supporting admission of the evidence under the Leon good-faith exception.
Why It Matters
The decision confirms that a state may authorize its judges to issue warrants for electronic records held by companies in another state when the receiving state requires compliance with such warrants. Interstate service and comity do not, by themselves, make a warrant unconstitutional.
The ruling also distinguishes state-issued electronic-record warrants from federal warrants governed by Rule 41 and reinforces the Eighth Circuit’s view that officers ordinarily need not independently determine the territorial limits of a judge’s warrant authority before relying on an issued warrant.