Commonwealth v. Martinez (Lawyers Weekly No. 10-024-17)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports. If you find a typographical error or other formal error, please notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Judicial Court, John Adams Courthouse, 1 Pemberton Square, Suite 2500, Boston, MA, 02108-1750; (617) 557-1030; SJCReporter@sjc.state.ma.us SJC-12076 COMMONWEALTH vs. ADALBERTO MARTINEZ. Bristol. October 6, 2016. – February 7, 2017. Present: Gants, C.J., Botsford, Lenk, Hines, Gaziano, Lowy, & Budd, JJ. Obscenity, Child pornography. Constitutional Law, Search and seizure. Search and Seizure, Computer. Evidence, Information stored on computer. Complaint received and sworn to in the Fall River Division of the District Court Department on May 9, 2012. A pretrial motion to suppress evidence was heard by Kevin J. Finnerty, J., and the case was tried before him. The Supreme Judicial Court on its own initiative transferred the case from the Appeals Court. Michelle A. Dame for the defendant. Soshana E. Stern, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth. BOTSFORD, J. The defendant, Adalberto Martinez, appeals from his conviction of possessing child pornography in violation of G. L. c. 272, § 29C. He challenges the denial of his motion to suppress computer evidence obtained pursuant to a search warrant. The gravamen of the defendant’s claim is that the police needed to do more to link the defendant to the place searched and the items seized before a warrant could validly issue. We affirm the denial of the motion to suppress and the conviction. Background. 1. IP addresses. All computers that connect to the Internet identify each other through a unique string of numbers known as an Internet protocol address (IP address). See Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, Beginner’s Guide to Internet Protocol (IP) Addresses 2, 4 (2011) (ICANN Guide). In general, when a subscriber purchases Internet service from an Internet service provider (ISP), the ISP selects from a roster of IP addresses under its control and assigns a unique IP address to the subscriber at a particular physical address. See id. at 4, 6; United States v. Kearney, 672 F.3d 81, 89-90 & n.6 (1st Cir. 2012). See also Office of Legal Education, United States Department of Justice, Searching and Seizing Computers and Obtaining Electronic Evidence in Criminal Investigations 65 (2009) (DOJ, Searching and Seizing Computers). The IP address assigned to a particular subscriber may change over time, but the ISP keeps a log of which IP address is assigned to each subscriber at any given moment in time. See Kearney, supra; DOJ, Searching and Seizing Computers, supra. In the early days of […]