United States v. Stuart Romm

We are called upon to decide whether, absent a search warrant or probable cause, the contents of a laptop computer may be searched at an international border and, if so, what evidence is sufficient to convict its owner of receiving and possessing child pornography. We also address an error in the jury instructions on the mental state required for knowingly possessing child pornography.

Defendant Stuart Romm connected to the internet from a Las Vegas hotel room and visited websites containing images of child pornography. As Romm viewed the images online and enlarged them on his screen, his computer automatically saved copies of the images to his “internet cache.” Based on 40 images deleted from his internet cache and two images deleted from another part of his hard drive, Romm was convicted of knowingly receiving and knowingly possessing child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2252A(a)(2), (a)(5)(B). Romm appeals both of these convictions, as well as his concurrent mandatory minimum sentences of ten and fifteen years.

First, Romm claims the evidence of his crime should have been suppressed as the fruits of an unlawful border search. Second, he challenges the sufficiency of…