Commonwealth v. Goodis

299 A.3d 1008

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania

v.Michael GOODIS, Appellant

No. 701 WDA 2021

Superior Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued March 2, 2022

Filed July 28, 2023

Stephen W. Gorman, Pittsburgh, for appellant.

James T. Lazar, Assistant District Attorney, Greensburg, for Commonwealth, appellee.

BEFORE: MURRAY, J., SULLIVAN, J., and COLINS, J.^*

OPINION BY COLINS, J.:

Appellant, Michael Goodis, appeals from the judgment of sentence imposed for his convictions of dissemination of child pornography, possession of child pornography, and criminal use of a communication facility.¹ Because the trial court erred in denying Appellant's motion to suppress evidence obtained from a search of his house that violated his rights under the Pennsylvania Constitution, we are constrained to vacate Appellant's convictions and judgment of sentence and remand this case for a new trial.

This case arises out of events in 2014. Between May 14, 2014 and June 1, 2014, Detective Robert Erdley, an Indiana County internet crimes against children investigator, ran searches for child pornography on the internet using a law enforcement version of the BitTorrent file sharing program. N.T. Trial at 72-77, 80-82. In this investigation, Detective Erdley downloaded 22 files that contained child pornography from IP address 71.60.15.7. Id. at 82-92, 95-96, 104. The BitTorrent program that the IP address 71.60.15.7 was using to transmit these files was uTorrent 3.4.1, a program that runs on Windows and Mac computers. Id. at 108. In response to a court order, Comcast, the internet company that issued the IP address, identified IP address 71.60.15.7 as belonging to Appellant at his house in Export, Pennsylvania in Westmoreland County. Id. at 99-102.

Detective Erdley provided the information from his investigation to Lieutenant Robert Jones, a Greensburg, Westmoreland County police officer, who on September 18, 2014 applied for and obtained a search warrant for Appellant's house authorizing search for and seizure of computer hardware, computer processing units, including storage devices, and computer input and output devices. N.T. Trial at 102, 135, 186, 205-06; Defendant's Ex. D. Lieutenant Jones and two Murrysville police officers executed the search warrant the same day and seized a computer tower, a tablet computer, a Synology DiskStation network-attached storage device (NAS), and some other external hard drives and flash drives. N.T. Trial at 135, 137-40, 146, 152, 155, 205-06.

Lieutenant Jones did a full forensic examination of the computer tower and all of the external drives other than the NAS and found no child pornography on any those items. N.T. Trial at 141-43, 146-48, 211, 215, 217-18. Lieutenant Jones examined the tablet using the access code provided by Appellant through his counsel and found no child pornography on it. Id. at 148-51, 211. Lieutenant Jones did not examine the NAS until February 15, 2017, and when he began to make a forensic image of one of the four drives of that device, the NAS had degraded to 33% and the drive made sounds indicating imminent failure. Id. at 155-58, 162-63, 225-26, 243. Because Lieutenant Jones believed that the NAS was likely to fail before forensic imaging could be completed, he put the drive back in the NAS and instead attached the NAS to his router, which had no internet access, and accessed the NAS through its web interface. Id. at 158-65. The NAS did not require inputting of a password to access its contents. Id. at 162, 229.

Lieutenant Jones found more than 30 child pornography files on the NAS in a folder labeled "mtemp" with the file path "MEGABIZ-V3/Data/C/Users/Michael/Desktop/mtemp" that appeared to be backup from a Windows computer with the network name MEGABIZ-V3. N.T. Trial at 165-82, 184-88. Many of these files bore names that indicated that they related to sex acts with minors. Id. at 177-81, 185-86; Commonwealth Exs. 7-8, 10, 14, 16. Lieutenant Jones made a copy onto another device of the NAS's entire backup of the MEGABIZ-V3 computer. N.T. Trial at 165-66, 191, 230-31.

No computer with the name MEGABIZ-V3 was found in the search of Appellant's house. N.T. Trial at 167, 202. The child pornography files found by Lieutenant Jones on the NAS were different from the child pornography files downloaded by Detective Erdley and none of the files downloaded by Detective Erdley was found on the NAS or any other computer devices seized from Appellant's house. Id. at 178-80, 184-88, 239.

On February 21, 2017, Appellant was charged with dissemination of child pornography, possession of child pornography, and criminal use of a communication facility. Appellant filed a motion to suppress the evidence seized from his house on the ground that the search was conducted in violation of the requirement that police announce their identity, purpose, and authority before entering. The trial court held two evidentiary hearings on the motion to suppress at which Appellant, Lieutenant Jones, and the two Murrysville police officers who executed the search warrant with Lieutenant Jones all testified. In addition, security camera video and audio recordings of the officers’ entry into Appellant's house to execute the search warrant were admitted in evidence. On September 17, 2018, the trial court entered an order denying Appellant's motion to suppress. Appellant filed a motion for reconsideration of the denial of his suppression motion, which the trial court denied.

The NAS, which Lieutenant Jones had left running after he made his copy of the MEGABIZ-V3 backup, crashed and ceased being able to function in 2020. N.T. Trial at 241-42. Before the NAS failed, expert witnesses for Appellant had an opportunity to examine the NAS in November 2018 and September 2019. Id. at 243-44.

A jury trial was held from October 7, 2020 to October 9, 2020. The Commonwealth called Detective Erdley and Lieutenant Jones, who testified concerning their investigations and what they found as set forth above. Both of these witnesses testified as expert witnesses, Detective Erdley as an expert in the field of internet crimes against children, file sharing, and internet protocol and Lieutenant Jones as an expert in the field of forensic computer examination. N.T. Trial at 58, 128. It was stipulated by Appellant that the files downloaded from Appellant's IP address and more than 30 files found in the MEGABIZ-V3 mtemp folder on Appellant's NAS contained photographs, videotapes or computer depictions of children under the age of 18 engaging in prohibited sex acts. Id. at 104, 187-88. Appellant testified on his own behalf and called two expert witnesses, a computer forensics expert who had examined the NAS and an expert in computer security and computer networks.

Appellant testified that he was unaware of the child pornography files that were sent by his IP address and found on the NAS and that he never put any child pornography and his computers and devices or shared or possessed child pornography. N.T. Trial at 319-21. Appellant testified that he purchased the NAS in March or May of 2013 and that he set up the NAS for remote access. Id. at 309, 370. Appellant testified that MEGABIZ-V3 was a computer that he had owned and gave away to a friend in 2013 and that the MEGABIZV3 folders on the NAS came from previous backup devices that were subsequently backed up on the NAS, but testified that he put some files in MEGABIZ-V3 folders after he had the NAS and no longer had MEGABIZ-V3. Id. at 313-17, 331-32. Appellant testified that he was in the business of producing audio for television commercials, games, and other video productions and that he used his computers for that work. Id. at 299-303. Appellant testified that his wireless router was not password protected in 2014 because clients and people he was working with used the computers and he did not want to have to constantly give out the password. Id. at 304, 336-37. Appellant testified that one of his neighbors was within wireless range of his house. Id. at 304-06, 336. Appellant also identified a screenshot of his wireless router's port configuration that he testified that he took in 2014 before his NAS and other computer equipment were seized, and that screenshot was admitted in evidence. Id. at 371-75; Defendant's Ex. E. Appellant's computer forensics expert testified that third parties within range of the owner's wireless router can access a computer from outside the owner's network if the network is not password protected. N.T. Trial at 280-81, 291-93, 296-97. The computer forensics expert also testified that he obtained system logs from the NAS when he examined it in 2019 and those logs were admitted in evidence. Id. at 268-70; Defendant's Ex. C. Appellant's computer security and computer networks expert testified that the port configuration in the screenshot identified by Appellant made Appellant's NAS vulnerable to internet access by outsiders. N.T. Trial at 397-401. He also testified that the NAS system logs showed that the NAS was not turned on between September 18, 2014 and March 20, 2017 and was not turned on in February 2017, when Lieutenant Jones testified that he examined it and found the child pornography. Id. at 410-18, 431.

On October 9, 2020, the jury convicted Appellant of one count of dissemination of child pornography, 30 counts of possession of child pornography, and one count of criminal use of a communication facility. N.T. Trial at 547-49. The trial court, on January 8, 2021, sentenced Appellant to a term of imprisonment of one year less one day to two years less one day for the dissemination of child pornography conviction and seven years’ probation for the criminal use of a communication facility conviction and each of the possession of child pornography convictions. Sentencing Order. The trial court ordered that all of the probation sentences were to be served consecutive to the imprisonment sentence and concurrent to the other probation sentences and also imposed 25-year registration...