State v. Mixton
This text of 447 P.3d 829 (State v. Mixton) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Arizona primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.
Opinions
EPPICH, Presiding Judge:
¶1 William Mixton appeals his convictions for twenty counts of sexual exploitation of a minor under fifteen years of age, arguing police violated his federal and state constitutional rights by obtaining, without a warrant, information from two service providers identifying him as the sender of certain incriminating *834internet messages. He contends the trial court erred in failing to suppress evidence obtained as a result of that warrantless acquisition of information. We conclude that, although the information was obtained in violation of article II, § 8 of the Arizona Constitution, the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies. Accordingly, we affirm Mixton's convictions and sentences.
Factual and Procedural Background
¶2 In March 2016, an undercover detective investigating child exploitation placed an ad on a popular internet advertising forum targeting offenders interested in child pornography and incest, inviting those interested to contact him to join a group chat on a messaging application known for minimal verification of its users' identities. Several people responded to the ad, including one who provided his messaging application screen name "tabooin520" and asked to be added to the group chat. In the days after the detective added this user to the group, the user posted several images and videos depicting child pornography. When the detective sent a person-to-person message to the user thanking him for the pictures, the user responded by sending the detective additional images of child pornography in personal messages.
¶3 At the detective's request, federal agents participating in the investigation served a federal administrative subpoena on the messaging application provider to obtain the user's IP address.1 Once the provider furnished the IP address, the detective was able to determine the user's internet service provider (ISP) by using publicly available information. Again, federal agents served a subpoena, and as a result, the ISP supplied the street address of the user to whom the IP address was assigned. Based on this information, the detective obtained a search warrant for that address.
¶4 Mixton lived in a room at that address. During execution of the search warrant, police seized from Mixton's room a cell phone, an external hard drive, a laptop computer, and a desktop computer, each of which contained numerous images and videos containing child pornography. In some of the folders containing these images and videos, police also found images of Mixton, and images the detective had sent to the user via the messaging application.
¶5 Based on images found on the devices in Mixton's room, a grand jury indicted Mixton on charges including twenty counts of sexual exploitation of a minor under fifteen years of age. The trial court severed counts for other offenses, and after a four-day trial for sexual exploitation, a jury convicted Mixton on all twenty counts. For each count, the court imposed a seventeen-year sentence, all to be served consecutively. We have jurisdiction over Mixton's appeal pursuant to A.R.S. §§ 13-4031 and 13-4033(A)(1).
Motion to Suppress
¶6 Before trial, Mixton moved to suppress both the subscriber information obtained via the administrative subpoenas and all evidence collected as a result of that information including the evidence obtained during the search of his home. He argued that both the Fourth Amendment and article II, § 8 of the Arizona Constitution protected his reasonable expectation of privacy in the subscriber information, prohibiting law enforcement from obtaining that information without a warrant or other court order. After brief oral argument, the trial court denied the motion, ruling that Mixton had no recognized privacy interest in the subscriber information.2
*835¶7 On appeal, Mixton reasserts his contention that both the Fourth Amendment and article II, § 8 protect the identifying information he transmitted to the service providers. We review de novo constitutional issues raised in a motion to suppress, considering only the evidence presented at the suppression hearing and viewing that evidence in the light most favorable to upholding the trial court's ruling. State v. Blakley ,
¶8 As a preliminary matter, Mixton urges us to address the issue under article II, § 8 before we address it under the Fourth Amendment in order to "honor[ ] the intent of the [state constitution's] framers to provide an independent and primary organic law, and ... ensure[ ] that the rights of Arizonans will not erode even when federal constitutional rights do." Clint Bolick, Vindicating the Arizona Constitution's Promise of Freedom ,
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EPPICH, Presiding Judge:
¶1 William Mixton appeals his convictions for twenty counts of sexual exploitation of a minor under fifteen years of age, arguing police violated his federal and state constitutional rights by obtaining, without a warrant, information from two service providers identifying him as the sender of certain incriminating *834internet messages. He contends the trial court erred in failing to suppress evidence obtained as a result of that warrantless acquisition of information. We conclude that, although the information was obtained in violation of article II, § 8 of the Arizona Constitution, the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies. Accordingly, we affirm Mixton's convictions and sentences.
Factual and Procedural Background
¶2 In March 2016, an undercover detective investigating child exploitation placed an ad on a popular internet advertising forum targeting offenders interested in child pornography and incest, inviting those interested to contact him to join a group chat on a messaging application known for minimal verification of its users' identities. Several people responded to the ad, including one who provided his messaging application screen name "tabooin520" and asked to be added to the group chat. In the days after the detective added this user to the group, the user posted several images and videos depicting child pornography. When the detective sent a person-to-person message to the user thanking him for the pictures, the user responded by sending the detective additional images of child pornography in personal messages.
¶3 At the detective's request, federal agents participating in the investigation served a federal administrative subpoena on the messaging application provider to obtain the user's IP address.1 Once the provider furnished the IP address, the detective was able to determine the user's internet service provider (ISP) by using publicly available information. Again, federal agents served a subpoena, and as a result, the ISP supplied the street address of the user to whom the IP address was assigned. Based on this information, the detective obtained a search warrant for that address.
¶4 Mixton lived in a room at that address. During execution of the search warrant, police seized from Mixton's room a cell phone, an external hard drive, a laptop computer, and a desktop computer, each of which contained numerous images and videos containing child pornography. In some of the folders containing these images and videos, police also found images of Mixton, and images the detective had sent to the user via the messaging application.
¶5 Based on images found on the devices in Mixton's room, a grand jury indicted Mixton on charges including twenty counts of sexual exploitation of a minor under fifteen years of age. The trial court severed counts for other offenses, and after a four-day trial for sexual exploitation, a jury convicted Mixton on all twenty counts. For each count, the court imposed a seventeen-year sentence, all to be served consecutively. We have jurisdiction over Mixton's appeal pursuant to A.R.S. §§ 13-4031 and 13-4033(A)(1).
Motion to Suppress
¶6 Before trial, Mixton moved to suppress both the subscriber information obtained via the administrative subpoenas and all evidence collected as a result of that information including the evidence obtained during the search of his home. He argued that both the Fourth Amendment and article II, § 8 of the Arizona Constitution protected his reasonable expectation of privacy in the subscriber information, prohibiting law enforcement from obtaining that information without a warrant or other court order. After brief oral argument, the trial court denied the motion, ruling that Mixton had no recognized privacy interest in the subscriber information.2
*835¶7 On appeal, Mixton reasserts his contention that both the Fourth Amendment and article II, § 8 protect the identifying information he transmitted to the service providers. We review de novo constitutional issues raised in a motion to suppress, considering only the evidence presented at the suppression hearing and viewing that evidence in the light most favorable to upholding the trial court's ruling. State v. Blakley ,
¶8 As a preliminary matter, Mixton urges us to address the issue under article II, § 8 before we address it under the Fourth Amendment in order to "honor[ ] the intent of the [state constitution's] framers to provide an independent and primary organic law, and ... ensure[ ] that the rights of Arizonans will not erode even when federal constitutional rights do." Clint Bolick, Vindicating the Arizona Constitution's Promise of Freedom ,
¶9 For this reason, and because Mixton has also challenged his convictions under the Fourth Amendment, we analyze the issues here first under the Fourth Amendment. In doing so we follow the lead of our supreme court, which has taken this approach in deciding article II, § 8 challenges. See, e.g. , Hernandez ,
Fourth Amendment
¶10 The Fourth Amendment provides that "[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated." "A 'search' under the Fourth Amendment occurs 'when an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to consider reasonable is infringed.' "
*836State v. Welch ,
¶11 In general, the Fourth Amendment does not protect information that a person reveals to a third party who then reveals it to the state, "even if the information is revealed [to the third party] on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose and the confidence placed in the third party will not be betrayed." United States v. Miller ,
¶12 Mixton nonetheless contends that he had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his identity because his conduct shows a calculated effort to maintain anonymity: He used a messaging application known for collecting little information from its users and communicated in that application using a pseudonym. But while a person must have a subjective expectation of privacy in order to invoke Fourth Amendment protection, it must also be "one that society is prepared to recognize as 'reasonable' " for the Fourth Amendment to apply. Smith ,
¶13 Because Mixton had no federally recognized privacy interest in his subscriber information or IP address, law enforcement did not need a warrant under the Fourth Amendment to obtain that information from Mixton's service providers. The trial court did not err in denying Mixton's Fourth Amendment claim.
Article II, § 8 of the Arizona Constitution
¶14 Article II, § 8 of the Arizona Constitution provides that "[n]o person shall be disturbed in his private affairs, or his home invaded, without authority of law." Although article II, § 8 "is of the same general effect and purpose as the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States," "[w]e have the right [to interpret] our own constitutional provisions as we think logical and proper, notwithstanding their analogy to the Federal Constitution and the federal decisions based on that Constitution." Turley v. State ,
¶15 While Arizona's appellate courts have never extended article II, § 8 beyond the Fourth Amendment outside the context of the home, see Peltz ,
¶16 No published opinions address the third-party doctrine under Arizona's Constitution.4 We review de novo a matter of first impression regarding whether a particular expectation of privacy should be recognized *838under constitutional law. State v. Huerta ,
¶17 Mixton argues that because article II, § 8 explicitly grants protection to "private affairs" in addition to homes, its protection of private affairs must extend beyond the protections offered by the Fourth Amendment, as it does for homes. He urges us to follow Justice Bolick's view that article II, § 8 's protection of "private affairs" must differ from the protection afforded by the Fourth Amendment because the language is different. See Hernandez ,
¶18 To determine whether a private affair has been disturbed, Mixton contends that we should focus on "the nature of the government's actions" rather than applying a reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test akin to that in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. See State v. Campbell ,
¶19 Mixton next argues that internet users have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their identity when communicating using a pseudonym on the internet. Noting growing public concern about government's ability to collect information from technologies such as the internet that are an indispensable part of modern life, he urges us to join "[a] growing number of states [that] have declined to import the third-party doctrine into their state constitutional search-and-seizure provisions." Zanders v. State ,
¶20 As mentioned above in our discussion of the Fourth Amendment, the federal third-party doctrine generally holds that a person has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information revealed to a third party, even "on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose and the confidence placed in the third party will not be betrayed." Miller ,
¶21 In Smith , the Court concluded that the suspect had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the phone numbers he dialed.
[W]e doubt that people in general entertain any actual expectation of privacy in the numbers they dial. All telephone users realize that they must "convey" phone numbers to the telephone company, since it is through telephone company switching equipment that their calls are completed. All subscribers realize, moreover, that the phone company has facilities for making permanent records of the numbers they dial, for they see a list of their long-distance (toll) calls on their monthly bills. In fact, pen registers and similar devices are routinely used by telephone companies "for the purposes of checking billing operations, detecting fraud and preventing violations of law." ... Telephone users, in sum, typically know that they must convey numerical information to the phone company; that the phone company has facilities for recording this information; and that the phone company does in fact record this information for a variety of legitimate business purposes. Although subjective expectations cannot be scientifically gauged, it is too much to believe that telephone subscribers, under these circumstances, harbor any general expectation that the numbers they dial will remain secret.
When he used his phone, petitioner voluntarily conveyed numerical information to the telephone company and "exposed" that information to its equipment in the ordinary course of business. In so doing, petitioner assumed the risk that the company would reveal to police the numbers he dialed.
¶22 Federal courts have uniformly applied the third-party doctrine in Smith to information held by ISPs such as the subscriber information of a particular user, logs showing the user's internet activity through the IP
*840addresses of websites a user has visited, and the email addresses of those who send and receive emails to and from the user. See, e.g. , Caira ,
[E]-mail and Internet users have no expectation of privacy in the to/from addresses of their messages or the IP addresses of the websites they visit because they should know that this information is provided to and used by Internet service providers for the specific purpose of directing the routing of information. Like telephone numbers, which provide instructions to the "switching equipment that processed those numbers," e-mail to/from addresses and IP addresses are not merely passively conveyed through third party equipment, but rather are voluntarily turned over in order to direct the third party's servers.
Second, e-mail to/from addresses and IP addresses constitute addressing information and do not necessarily reveal any more about the underlying contents of communication than do phone numbers. When the government obtains the to/from addresses of a person's emails or the IP addresses of websites visited, it does not find out the contents of the messages or know the particular pages on the websites the person viewed. At best, the government may make educated guesses about what was said in the messages or viewed on the websites based on its knowledge of the e-mail to/from addresses and IP addresses-but this is no different from speculation about the contents of a phone conversation on the basis of the identity of the person or entity that was dialed.
Forrester ,
¶23 The concerns Mixton raises regarding the third-party doctrine are not new: Justices Stewart and Marshall, both joined by Justice Brennan, raised the same general concerns in dissents in Smith .6 Justice Stewart noted the essential role of the telephone in private communications, and concluded that phone users were entitled to assume that the numbers they dialed were private just like the conversations. Smith ,
¶24 Many legal scholars have lodged similar criticisms and concerns. For example, one remarked:
Privacy of information normally means the selective disclosure of personal information rather than total secrecy. ... A bank customer may not care that the employees of the bank know a lot about his financial affairs, but it does not follow that he is indifferent to having those affairs broadcast to the world or disclosed to the government.
Richard Posner, The Economics of Justice 342 (1981); see also Wayne R. LaFave, 1 Search & Seizure § 2.7(c) (5th ed. 2018) ("The result reached in Miller is dead wrong, and the Court's woefully inadequate reasoning does great violence to the theory of Fourth Amendment protection the Court had developed in Katz ."); Avidan Y. Cover, Corporate Avatars and the Erosion of the Populist Fourth Amendment ,
¶25 Many states have refused to adopt the third-party doctrine established in Miller and Smith under their state constitutions, concluding that people do have a reasonable expectation of privacy in information they must furnish to companies providing banking, phone, and internet service in order to use those services. See, e.g. , People v. Chapman ,
¶26 For example, in State v. Reid , the New Jersey Supreme Court affirmed the trial court's suppression of an internet user's subscriber information, holding that under that state constitution's search-and-seizure provision, internet users have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their subscriber information, just as they do in their bank records and phone calls.
*842address usually only identifies the ISP to which it is assigned, and only that ISP can match their customer's identity to an IP address. Id. at 29. When the government obtains the user's identity through his or her subscriber information, the government can learn intimate details of the subscriber's life, including the "stores at which a person shops, the political organizations a person finds interesting, a person's ... fantasies, her health concerns, and so on." Id. at 33 (alteration in original) (quoting Daniel Solove, Reconstructing Electronic Surveillance Law ,
¶27 For similar reasons, we conclude that internet users generally have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their subscriber information.8 We therefore join the several other states that have declined to apply the federal third-party doctrine established in Miller and Smith under their state constitutions in circumstances analogous to those before us. In the internet era, the electronic storage capacity of third parties has in many cases replaced the personal desk drawer as the repository of sensitive personal and business information-information that would unquestionably be protected from warrantless government searches if on paper in a desk at a home or office. The third-party doctrine allows the government a peek at this information in a way that is the twenty-first-century equivalent of a trip through a home to see what books and magazines the residents read, who they correspond with or call, and who they transact with and the nature of those transactions. Cf. Riley v. California ,
¶28 The state rests its argument in favor of the third-party doctrine on the rationales from Smith : It argues the information at issue here was "non-content" information that Mixton voluntarily submitted to the third-party service providers. But information that has been deemed as "non-content," such as a person's bank records, who a person calls or emails, what websites a person visits, or, as here, the identity behind anonymous communications, is part and parcel of a person's private affairs; access to it affords the government significant insight into a person's private activities and beliefs. Warrantless government collection of this information from an internet service provider or similar source thus constitutes a significant and unwarranted intrusion into a person's private affairs-an intrusion our constitution unambiguously prohibits. And we are not persuaded that a person gives up any reasonable expectation of privacy in this information because he or she "voluntarily" reveals his or her identity to an ISP to get service. The user provides the information for the limited purpose of obtaining service. It is entirely reasonable for the user to expect the provider not to exceed that purpose by revealing the user's identity to authorities in a way that connects it to his or her activities on the internet. Therefore, when the government compels the provider to release the internet user's identity in that way, and without a warrant, it invades the user's reasonable expectation of privacy.
¶29 We are especially troubled that the third-party doctrine grants the government unfettered ability to learn the identity behind anonymous speech, even without any showing or even suspicion of unlawful activity. An author's decision to remain anonymous, whether "motivated by fear of economic or official retaliation, by concern about social ostracism, or merely by a desire to preserve as much of one's privacy as possible, *843" "is an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment." McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm'n ,
¶30 Even if the government obtains nothing more without a warrant than basic identifying information connected to specific internet activity, other cherished rights are endangered. The right of free association, for example, is hollow when the government can identify an association's members through subscriber information matched with particular internet activity. The importance of privacy in one's associations is illustrated by NAACP v. Alabama , in which the Court ruled that the state could not compel the NAACP to produce the names and addresses of its members even with a court order, ruling that the compelled disclosure violated the members' freedom of association.
It is hardly a novel perception that compelled disclosure of affiliation with groups engaged in advocacy may constitute ... effective ... restraint on freedom of association. ... This Court has recognized the vital relationship between freedom to associate and privacy in one's associations. ...
We think that the production order, in the respects here drawn in question, must be regarded as entailing the likelihood of a substantial restraint upon the exercise by [the NAACP's] members of their right to freedom of association. [The NAACP] has made an uncontroverted showing that on past occasions revelation of the identity of its rank-and-file members has exposed these members to economic reprisal, loss of employment, threat of physical coercion, and other manifestations of public hostility. Under these circumstances, we think it apparent that compelled disclosure of [the NAACP's] Alabama membership is likely to affect adversely the ability of petitioner and its members to pursue their collective effort to foster beliefs which they admittedly have the right to advocate, in that it may induce members to withdraw from the Association and dissuade others from joining it because of fear of exposure of their beliefs shown through their associations and of the consequences of this exposure.
¶31 In his partial dissent, Judge Espinosa allows that suppression of evidence of such First Amendment-protected activity obtained through government investigation of an IP address may be warranted. But were we to adopt his conclusion that, absent some unidentified Herculean effort to maintain anonymity, citizens abandon any claim to privacy in their internet activities, we would be hard-pressed to find a reasoned basis upon which to do so. Moreover, the privacy protections afforded by our constitutions are not limited to the exclusion of evidence in criminal proceedings; rather, they prohibit abusive governmental intrusions in the first place.
¶32 As to the concern that our reasoning would unduly impair legitimate law enforcement investigation of crimes like Mixton's, as noted in Judge Eckerstrom's dissent, police could have easily obtained a search warrant in this case.9 Our courts have long recognized that such minimal burdens on law enforcement are justified in service of constitutional protections. See, e.g., Riley ,
¶33 We are mindful our supreme court has expressed a reluctance to depart from Fourth Amendment precedent in analyzing suppression issues under article II, § 8. See Bolt ,
Good-Faith Exception
¶34 The purpose of the exclusionary rule is to deter unlawful police conduct. See Illinois v. Krull ,
¶35 Although the identifying information in this case was obtained by an administrative subpoena rather than a search warrant, we agree with the state's contention that the good-faith exception set forth in United States v. Leon ,
¶36 Other factors support our conclusion that the detective's reliance on the warrant issued by a neutral magistrate was objectively reasonable. First, the detective was aware federal agents obtained the identifying information using subpoena authority recognized by federal law. Second, every federal circuit court that has considered the issue has concluded, based upon United States Supreme Court precedent, that there is no expectation of privacy in one's identifying information given to an internet service provider.12 And third, as noted above, no Arizona state appellate court has previously found such an expectation of privacy. Indeed, other than in situations involving physical intrusion into the home, see Ault ,
¶37 While no binding appellate precedent specifically authorized the warrantless search here under article II, § 8, a significant body of appellate law, some of it binding, supported the practice as a reasonable search. In the circumstances here, it was objectively reasonable for police to rely on that precedent. See State v. Weakland ,
¶38 Finally, Arizona's statutory exceptions to the exclusionary rule weigh in favor of a finding of good faith. See A.R.S § 13-3925(B) (in suppression proceeding, "the proponent of the evidence may urge that the peace officer's conduct was taken in a reasonable, good faith belief that the conduct was proper" and the evidence should be admitted), (C) ("The trial court shall not suppress evidence that is otherwise admissible in a criminal proceeding if the court determines that the evidence was seized by a peace officer as a result of a good faith mistake or technical violation.").
Disposition
¶39 Although the evidence used to convict Mixton was obtained in violation of his right to be free from government interference in his private affairs under article II, § 8 of the Arizona Constitution, the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies. We therefore affirm his convictions and sentences.
ECKERSTROM, Judge, concurring in part, dissenting in part:
¶40 The majority opinion comprehensively explains why article II, § 8 of the Arizona Constitution requires the state to secure a warrant under the circumstances here. That opinion observes correctly that a person's actions on the internet may expose "intimate details of the subscriber's life," over which a person would have a reasonable, societally recognized expectation of privacy. The opinion aptly identifies the analytical limitations of the third-party doctrine in describing the boundaries of reasonable expectations of privacy in this contemporary context. Were we to find no violation of article II, § 8 under these facts, we would render the specific guarantee of the Arizona Constitution-that "[n]o person shall be disturbed in his private affairs ... without authority of law"-an empty promise. I join fully in that section of the opinion. I write separately because I would hold that the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides the same protection.
¶41 As the majority observes, lower federal courts have consistently held that persons have no expectation of privacy in identifying information voluntarily conveyed to internet service providers. See Weast ,
¶42 In Carpenter, the Court addressed whether the government may, without a warrant, track a person's movements by use of cell-site location information (CSLI).
¶43 That reasoning should be dispositive here. The privacy interest at stake is no less substantial. As the majority opinion explains, our actions on the internet expose our worries, fantasies, and political views at least as comprehensively as the sequence of our physical locations. Internet access has likewise become an integral part of participation in contemporary culture: it is a place we shop, converse with friends and romantic partners, seek information about medical conditions, and debate the issues of the day. And, as with cell-phone use, one cannot secure such access without exposing some private information to a vendor. See Carpenter , 138 S. Ct. at 2220 (questioning whether persons voluntarily "assume[ ] the risk" of exposing private actions under such circumstances (alteration in Carpenter ) (quoting Smith ,
¶44 In fact, our expectation of privacy in internet use is arguably greater than any similar expectation we hold for our physical movements in public. A visit to an internet site is presumptively anonymous unless we choose to make it otherwise;13 our movements on public streets are presumptively visible to all we encounter. For this reason, the Court has required a warrant for the locational tracking of criminal suspects only when that tracking is sufficiently protracted to reveal private features of their lives. See, e.g. ,
¶45 For these reasons, I can identify no principled basis to distinguish the instant case from the Court's holding in Carpenter . The United States Supreme Court's precedents are binding on this court as to federal constitutional matters. I would therefore follow Carpenter and hold that the Fourth Amendment required the state to secure a warrant to acquire Mixton's identifying information from his internet provider.14
¶46 As Justice Roberts emphasized, the Court's application of the Fourth Amendment to evolving technologies involves no *847novel guiding principles. To the contrary, "it is informed by historical understandings" of "the privacies of life" in the founding era. Carpenter , 138 S. Ct. at 2214. As "technology has enhanced the Government's capacity to encroach upon areas normally guarded from inquisitive eyes," the Court has sought to protect those same privacies. Id.
¶47 Nothing about our opinion-which the majority bases exclusively on our state constitution and I would base on the Fourth Amendment as well-should prevent our law enforcement agencies from enforcing the rule of law. Indeed, as new technologies become primary conduits of human behavior, our police have no choice but to effectively conduct law enforcement activities in those realms. We merely hold here that our officers need appropriate legal cause, confirmed by a neutral magistrate, to invade traditional privacies that persons now exercise in new domains.15
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