People v. Martin

1

2024 IL App (4th) 230124-U

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. JEFFREY LYNN MARTIN, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 4-23-0124

Court of Appeals of Illinois, Fourth District

October 4, 2024

This Order was filed under Supreme Court Rule 23 and is not precedent except in the limited circumstances allowed under Rule 23(e)(1).

Appeal from the Circuit Court of McLean County No. 17CF1015 Honorable William A. Yoder, Judge Presiding.

JUSTICE DeARMOND delivered the judgment of the court. Justices Steigmann and Knecht concurred in the judgment.

ORDER

DeARMOND, JUSTICE

¶ 1 Held:

(1) The evidence adequately established defendant's knowing and voluntary possession of child pornography.

(2) Defendant's waiver of counsel was knowing and intelligent despite the trial court greatly overstating the potential sentence when admonishing him under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 401(a) (eff. July 1, 1984), as the record showed defendant's waiver was not based on the error.

(3) Because the action defendant argues constituted an improper search of his computer-the opening of unobscured shortcuts to Internet pages-did not constitute a search defendant has failed to show the trial court erred in allowing the admission of the corresponding evidence.

¶ 2 After a trial during which defendant, Jeffrey Lynn Martin represented himself, a jury found him guilty of 10 counts of possession of child pornography: 8 counts were based on possession of a visual image of a person he should have known to be under the age of 13 (720 ILCS 5/11-20.1(a)(6), (c-5) (West 2014))-Class 2 felonies-and 2 counts were based on possession of a visual image of a person he should have known to be under the age of 18 (720 ILCS 5/11-20.1(a)(6), (c) (West 2014))-Class 3 felonies. Defendant received an aggregate sentence of 28 years' imprisonment.

¶ 3 On appeal, defendant makes three claims of error. First, he contends the evidence indicating his possession of the images was knowing and voluntary was insufficient to support the convictions. Second, he contends he lacked the necessary information to waive counsel because he received multiple estimates regarding his potential aggregate sentence, all of which were much higher than the correct number. Third, he argues the police officer's "warrantless search of the computer [containing the pornography] by clicking on a link that was displayed on the computer's desktop" was an illegal search and, consequently, the evidence resulting from the search should have been suppressed.

¶ 4 We affirm.

¶ 5 I. BACKGROUND

¶ 6 Each of defendant's claims of error turns on a different set of facts. Therefore, we address those facts before the analyses of each claim. We here discuss the general background.

¶ 7 In September 2017, defendant was charged by indictment with 13 counts of possession of child pornography. Each count alleged the possession occurred between October 2014 and December 2015. The State ultimately dropped 3 of the counts leaving the 10 counts of which defendant was convicted. Two other felony cases against defendant, McLean County case Nos. 16-CF-52 and 16-CF-231, were then pending against defendant. The State elected to proceed with case No. 16-CF-231 before proceeding with the present case.

¶ 8 Defendant's trial took place in November 2022. He appeared pro se. The jury found him guilty on all 10 counts. He did not file a posttrial motion. The sentencing hearing took place in February 2023. Defendant remained pro se at the hearing. The trial court sentenced defendant to 14-year terms of imprisonment for each of the convictions relating to victims under the age of 13 and 5-year terms of imprisonment for each of the convictions relating to victims under the age of 18. The second four of the 14-year terms were to be consecutive to the first four of the 14-year terms. The five-year terms were to run concurrently with one another and with the other terms. The court sentenced defendant to an aggregate term of 28 years. Defendant did not file a postsentencing motion.

¶ 9 This appeal followed.

¶ 10 II. ANALYSIS

¶ 11 A. Sufficiency of the Evidence

¶ 12 1. Facts Relevant to the Sufficiency of the Evidence

¶ 13 The charges at issue were based on images recovered from an all-in-one computer found in a bedroom of a house defendant formerly occupied. Defendant does not contest he was the only person who had access to the computer or that the images on which his convictions were based depicted victims of the ages the State alleged. We thus need not address the evidence tending to establish those matters. The primary evidence relevant to possession of the images came from the testimony of Normal police Officer Jason Wood, who was assigned to "a specialty division where [he dealt] with technology," the testimony of Bloomington police Sergeant Josh Swartzentruber, who specialized in cybercrimes and, to a lesser extent, the testimony of Normal police Detective Brad Park and Sarah Joann Stephens, the woman with whom defendant had lived.

¶ 14 According to the evidence at trial, Thomas O'Donnell who was visiting Stephens's home looking for items Stephens could sell, noticed the all-in-one computer in a bedroom mostly used as a storage area. He suggested it was a salable item provided it was not password protected. His assistant, Ken Gusek, plugged it in and turned it on. It had no password protection and opened immediately to the desktop. Gusek noticed material he thought was "bad" and called for assistance. Detective Park, who testified he was present in Stephens's house to support her as she tried to get rid of property she had purchased for defendant, came to look at the computer desktop. He immediately noted the presence of links to websites, which had names that were "sexual in nature." He opened one link "that opened up [and] showed a very young female performing oral sex on a male." Park therefore seized the computer and obtained a search warrant to search its contents.

¶ 15 Officer Wood testified he received the computer from Park. He immediately used a standard forensic program to create an "image"-a complete copy on another device-of the contents of the computer's hard drive. A program associated with the one for making the hard drive image created a "hash value" of the hard drive. Wood described the hash value as a "thumbprint" and "a unique identifier that identifies kind of the data sets within the hard drive." The use of the hash values allowed Wood to ensure the image was an accurate copy of the data on defendant's computer.

¶ 16 When asked by defendant, Wood agreed, for a person familiar with computers, "clean[ing] temporary internet files out of a computer" was "pretty basic, pretty simple." Wood also explained shortcuts to websites-such as were present on defendant's computer desktop- only exist because the user has created them.

¶ 17 Sergeant Josh Swartzentruber testified he had worked for 11 years in the "digital forensics lab assigned to the cyber crimes unit." The trial court qualified Swartzentruber as an "expert in the area of forensic computer examination."

¶ 18 Swartzentruber testified Wood asked for assistance analyzing the image of defendant's computer. This analysis showed the computer had been running a version of a Windows operating system installed on October 15, 2014. Wood used a forensic program to search the image of the computer for Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) used for accessing the Internet. He found several URLs significant in a child pornography investigation. These included "fantasy mattress nudist children girls" and "so young teen girls wanted." Another significant URL was "first time little Lolita," for which defendant's computer had a desktop shortcut. A user would need to choose to create a desktop shortcut by using a "right click." The term "Lolita" was significant in child pornography investigations as "a search term used to acquire young girls."

¶ 19 Swartzentruber searched the image of the computer's hard drive for allocated space with child pornography images. He agreed with the State's explanation that space becomes "allocated" when a file is saved to a hard drive and the "computer designates [the particular space] as space that contains a file." When a file is deleted, the space it uses becomes "unallocated" and another file can be written over it. Swartzentruber did not find any child pornography images in the allocated space as such.

¶ 20 Swartzentruber also examined the stored Internet browser history, which included images stored as "temporary internet files" by the browser and information about those images. Swartzentruber also referred to such stored files as "cached." The creation of a stored Internet history and the caching of images was automatic and not the user's choice. Swartzentruber agreed cached images were "stored in the *** temporary internet file." A user could access cached images and treat them like other images, for instance by moving a cached image to another directory or emailing it.

¶ 21 The image of the computer hard drive contained a copy of a "volume shadow copy." According to Swartzentruber, a "volume shadow copy is a file that caches or *** [is] an image caught in time." It "captures everything that you've done" in a "specific timeframe." He further explained, using slightly different terms, the volume shadow copy was a timed backup. It could be used if the computer malfunctioned to restore the computer to its state at the time the backup was made. A volume shadow copy would include copies of the temporary internet files as they existed when the computer made the copy.

¶ 22 Swartzentruber testified the image of the volume shadow copy from defendant's computer contained temporary internet files,...