NACDL - United States v. Cotterman

United States v. Cotterman

Amicus curiae brief of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in support of defendant-appellee’s petition for rehearing en banc. In a prosecution for production, possession and importation of child pornography and obscene materials, the panel held that a search of the defendant’s laptop that began at the border and ended two days later at a government forensic laboratory almost 170 miles away fell within the border search doctrine.

United States v. Cotterman

Brief Details

Case No.: 09-10139
Brief Filed: September 19, 2011
Jurisdiction: 9th Circuit Court of Appeals

Key Topics in the Brief

Computers | Border Search

Briefs

United-States-v-Cotterman.PDF

Prior Decision

Panel decision reported at 637 F.3d 1068 (2011).

Argument(s)

Brief argues that the suspicionless, indefinite seizure of an individual’s laptop at the border raises constitutional concerns, and the suspicionless forensic search was outside the scope of a permissible investigatory detention and is abhorrent to the Fourth Amendment.