United States v. Paul Butts

MEMORANDUM

Having been convicted of multiple counts of possession of child pornography and one count of distribution of child pornography, Paul Richard Butts appeals the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress evidence. Reviewing de novo, we affirm the judgment of the district court.

By its terms, the Fourth Amendment’s Warrant Clause sets forth a number of items a warrant must contain to be valid, but a date on which the warrant is to be executed is not one of them. U.S. Const, amend. IV. Thus, in determining whether a search conducted after a warrant has expired complies with the Fourth Amendment, we look to ensure that probable cause to search continued to exist, and that the misdating of the warrant was inadvertent rather than intentional. See United States v. Hitchcock, 286 F.3d 1064, 1072 (9th Cir.), amended by 298 F.3d 1021 (9th Cir.2002).

The execution of the search warrant in this case satisfied these conditions. First, there was no evidence at the suppression hearing or at trial, and Butts points to none on appeal, that the probable cause that existed on September 28 (the date the warrant was signed) did not also exist on October 6 (the date the search was…