State v. Long

2020 Ohio 4090, 157 N.E.3d 362
Ohio Court of Appeals·Decided August 14, 2020·No. WD-19-021, WD-19-022·Published·Cited by 15 cases

Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF OHIO SIXTH APPELLATE DISTRICT

WOOD COUNTY

State of Ohio Court of Appeals Nos. WD-19-021 WD-19-022

Appellee Trial Court Nos. 2018CR0141 v. 2017CR0556

Stephen D. Long DECISION AND JUDGMENT Appellant Decided: August 14, 2020

*****

Paul A. Dobson, Wood County Prosecuting Attorney, and David T. Harold, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for appellee.

Neil S. McElroy, for appellant.

*****

MAYLE, J.

{¶ 1} In this consolidated appeal, appellant, Stephen Long, appeals the March 8, 2019 judgments of the Wood County Court of Common Pleas sentencing him to an aggregate prison term of ten years. For the following reasons, we affirm.

I. Background and Facts

{¶ 2} On November 16, 2017, Long was indicted on five counts of pandering sexually-oriented matter involving a minor in violation of R.C. 2907.322(A)(1), all second-degree felonies, and one count of possessing criminal tools in violation of R.C. 2923.24(A), a fifth-degree felony. On March 22, 2018, the grand jury issued a second indictment, charging Long with an additional eight counts of pandering sexually-oriented matter involving a minor in violation of R.C. 2907.322(A)(1), all second-degree felonies, and two counts of illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material or performance in violation of R.C. 2907.323(A)(1), both second-degree felonies.

{¶ 3} The facts relevant to this appeal are largely drawn from the affidavit submitted by Perrysburg Police Division (“PPD”) Detective Sergeant Mark Baumgardner with his application for a warrant to search Long’s home. According to the affidavit, on May 1, 2017, a “confidential informant” made a complaint to the PPD that the resident of 515 East Second Street in Perrysburg was masturbating to child pornography. Although there is very little information about the “informant” in the affidavit, Baumgardner implied that the informant was Long’s neighbor. For example, Baumgardner said that the informant “could see inside the residence of 515 East Second Street from the interior of [the informant’s] residence * * *” and “noticed what he thought could be child pornography, from his window, and then decided to get a closer look.” To do so, Baumgardner said that the informant “went outside of his residence and walked up to the window on the southeast corner of 515 East Second Street * * *.” The informant also knew that the person in the home watching the videos was Long and that Long was the only person who lived at 515 East Second Street.

{¶ 4} When the investigating officer, Officer Patrick McGuffin of the PPD, responded to the informant’s home, the informant told McGuffin that he could see Long sitting in front of a computer through the window. The informant “observed what he believed to be child pornography on the screen.” The informant walked outside to get a closer look and tried to record video of what he saw, but the video did not turn out clearly.

{¶ 5} From inside the informant’s house, McGuffin could see Long sitting in front of a computer monitor inside his house, but did not see any child pornography on the screen. The informant offered to show McGuffin the route he took to peer in Long’s window and took McGuffin “out of the east side of [the informant’s] residence and walked around back, and then up the driveway of 515 East Second Street near the window on the southeast corner of the residence at 515 East Second Street.”

{¶ 6} When McGuffin looked in the window, he saw “a white male with medium-

to short-brown hair” sitting at a desk with two computer monitors on it. He saw several video clips on the right monitor that showed two female children—who McGuffin estimated to be five or six years old—sucking on an adult male’s penis.

{¶ 7} Baumgardner followed up on McGuffin’s investigation by interviewing the informant. During the interview, the informant explained that he first noticed that the blinds on Long’s window were open and that Long was sitting at the computer. He then noticed, from his window, what looked like a video of a “small child in a red night gown [sic] or dress slowly being taken off,” and saw that Long appeared to be masturbating, so he decided to investigate further. The informant went up to Long’s window and saw a video of a female child who was approximately ten years old using a vibrator on her bare vagina. The informant showed Baumgardner the video he recorded while looking in Long’s window, but Baumgardner said that it was “difficult to make out what is on the screen with clarity.”

{¶ 8} Based on the affidavit, the judge of the Perrysburg Municipal Court granted a search warrant that yielded videos and images of children engaged in sexual acts and resulted in the indictments of Long.

{¶ 9} Long filed two motions to suppress. In the first, he argued that the affidavit in support of the search warrant did not contain sufficient information to show that the PPD had probable cause to search Long’s home because Baumgardner relied on facts provided by a “confidential informant,” but did not provide any information about the reliability and veracity of the informant, and McGuffin corroborated the informant’s information by illegally trespassing on the curtilage of Long’s home.

{¶ 10} In response to the first motion to suppress, the state argued that the municipal court judge’s probable-cause determination was proper because information from a citizen informant is considered inherently more reliable than information from a confidential informant, and Baumgardner “errantly” describing Long’s neighbor as a “confidential informant” did not affect the veracity of the neighbor’s information.

Additionally, the PPD could rely on the neighbor’s information because McGuffin corroborated the information. Moreover, the state argued, McGuffin saw the child pornography through a window with the blinds open while standing on Long’s driveway, which was an area impliedly open to the public, so anything McGuffin saw was in plain view and was not obtained in violation of Long’s constitutional rights.

{¶ 11} In the second motion to suppress, Long requested a hearing pursuant to Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154, 98 S.Ct. 2674, 57 L.Ed.2d 667 (1978), alleging that Baumgardner knowingly and intentionally, or with reckless disregard for the truth, included in his affidavit false statements that were necessary to the finding of probable cause. He claimed that Baumgardner omitted from his affidavit a statement regarding the reliability of the confidential informant and admitted that McGuffin was initially unable to confirm the informant’s report that Long was viewing child pornography. Long also claimed that Baumgardner failed to mention in his affidavit that, in order to look in Long’s window and confirm what was on Long’s computer monitor, the informant took McGuffin through a row of lilac bushes that divided Long’s yard from the neighbor’s yard and trespassed in Long’s enclosed backyard before ending up on Long’s driveway and peering in Long’s window.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

State v. Long, 2020 Ohio 4090, 157 N.E.3d 362 (Ohio Ct. App. 2020).

2020 Ohio 4090 (State v. Long) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

Related

State v. Dula
Ohio Court of Appeals, 2026
In re Hirt
2026 Ohio 681 (Ohio Court of Appeals, 2026)
State v. Haskins
2026 Ohio 19 (Ohio Court of Appeals, 2026)
State v. Frost
2025 Ohio 1081 (Ohio Court of Appeals, 2025)
State v. Lebron-Novas
2025 Ohio 1101 (Ohio Court of Appeals, 2025)
State v. Deeble
2024 Ohio 5418 (Ohio Court of Appeals, 2024)
State v. Pettaway
2024 Ohio 3041 (Ohio Court of Appeals, 2024)
State v. Williams
2023 Ohio 4344 (Ohio Court of Appeals, 2023)
State v. Morris
2023 Ohio 168 (Ohio Court of Appeals, 2023)
Long v. Watson
N.D. Ohio, 2022
State v. Cutlip
2022 Ohio 3524 (Ohio Court of Appeals, 2022)
State v. Rasheed
2021 Ohio 4509 (Ohio Court of Appeals, 2021)
State v. Siegel
2021 Ohio 4208 (Ohio Court of Appeals, 2021)
Toledo Bar Assn. v. Long (Slip Opinion)
2021 Ohio 3967 (Ohio Supreme Court, 2021)
State v. Connin
2020 Ohio 6867 (Ohio Court of Appeals, 2020)
State v. Jones
2020 Ohio 6667 (Ohio Court of Appeals, 2020)
State v. Holt
2020 Ohio 6649 (Ohio Court of Appeals, 2020)