In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 15‐3854
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff‐Appellee,
v.
JESSE D. FEATHERLY,
Defendant‐Appellant.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Western District of Wisconsin.
No. 0758 3:14‐cr‐00127‐1 — Barbara B. Crabb, Judge.
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ARGUED OCTOBER 5, 2016 — DECIDED JANUARY 17, 2017
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Before BAUER, FLAUM, and KANNE, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM. Jesse Featherly challenges the denial of his
motion to quash the search warrant that led to the discovery
of child pornography on his computer. Featherly contended
that the government secured the warrant by making an inten‐
tionally false statement on the warrant application. The dis‐
trict court disagreed, and Featherly pleaded guilty to receiv‐
ing child pornography. Because the court did not clearly err
2 No. 15‐3854
in concluding that there was no intentionally false statement
and that probable cause supported the warrant, we affirm.
Featherly, then 27, was living in a trailer park in Rice Lake,
Wisconsin, when his involvement with child pornography at‐
tracted the attention of law enforcement. An agent in Okla‐
homa discovered that Featherly’s Internet‐service account
was being used to share files containing child pornography.
An FBI special agent in Wisconsin, Jon Hauser, applied for a
warrant to search Featherly’s residence. In an affidavit filed
in support of the warrant application, Hauser stated that the
agent in Oklahoma, after partially downloading the shared
files, “was able to determine the IP address of this [user’s]
computer to be 68.190.144.255.” (An “Internet Protocol ad‐
dress” or “IP address” is defined elsewhere in the affidavit as
referring to “a unique number used by a computer to access
the Internet” and is assigned by a user’s Internet‐service pro‐
vider.) According to Hauser, the agent was able to use this
unique “address” and ascertain that an Internet‐service pro‐
vider, Charter Communications, at the time of the download
had assigned this IP address to Featherly’s service account.
A magistrate judge issued the warrant, concluding that
the affidavit established probable cause to search the resi‐
dence. The warrant was executed and, based on the images
found, Featherly was charged with receipt of child pornogra‐
phy, 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(2), and possession of it, id.
§ 2252(a)(4).
Featherly then moved for a hearing under Franks v. Dela‐
ware, 438 U.S. 154 (1978), seeking to quash the warrant and
suppress all evidence obtained during the search because
Hauser had falsely stated in his affidavit that the IP address
used by the suspect was traced to Featherly’s computer. The
No. 15‐3854 3
statement was false, Featherly maintained, because an IP ad‐
dress identifies only a modem—the device that connects com‐
puters to the Internet—and does not pinpoint the particular
computer that uses the modem to access the Internet. If
Hauser’s false statement were “excised” from the affidavit,
Featherly urged, there would be no evidence to trace the of‐
fending Internet user to his residence, and thus no probable
cause for the search.
The magistrate judge held an evidentiary hearing to clar‐
ify the facts relevant to Featherly’s challenge to the accuracy
of the application for the search warrant. An FBI special agent
who was based in Eau Claire, Forrest Wilkins, testified that he
was the primary investigator in Featherly’s case and had pre‐
pared the affidavit which Hauser reviewed and signed. Wil‐
kins elaborated on his understanding of the significance of an
IP address. He acknowledged, for instance, that an IP address
was associated with a modem at the service residence of the
Internet subscriber, but said that a modem could be defined
as a “computer,” because it was a “high speed data processing
device.”
The magistrate judge concluded that probable cause sup‐
ported the warrant and recommended that the motion to
quash the warrant be denied. This finding of probable cause,
the judge explained, was not affected by Wilkins’s view that
“computer” could be defined to include modems, but even if
this view were not correct, his adoption of a broader defini‐
tion had not been reckless or with an intent to mislead. The
judge dismissed Featherly’s semantic challenge to “com‐
puter” as irrelevant (“This court’s response to these argu‐
ments is ‘okay, so what?’”), and discounted the significance
of any flaw in the affidavit’s wording as “neither material nor
4 No. 15‐3854
misleading.” Based on the evidence in the affidavit, the court
reasonably could infer that a search of Featherly’s residence
would turn up evidence of child pornography because the
service account of the user sharing the incriminating files had
been registered to Featherly’s name and address. Finally, the
judge concluded, Wilkins did not perpetrate any knowing or
reckless falsehood: He had no reason to falsely attribute the
IP address to Featherly’s computer because such a misstate‐
ment “did nothing to bolster probable cause.”
Over Featherly’s objection, Judge Crabb adopted the mag‐
istrate judge’s report and recommendation, denied the mo‐
tion to quash the warrant, and reprimanded Featherly for
“persist[ing] in tilting at this windmill.” She agreed that the
affidavit did not contain an intentionally false statement or
material omission and thus did not need to be analyzed under
Franks; she also agreed that the affidavit supplied sufficient
probable cause to support the issuance of a warrant. And even
if Wilkins in the affidavit had wrongly referred to the modem
as a computer, any mistake was irrelevant because Charter
identified the modem as servicing Featherly’s residence, and
this identification was sufficient to support an inference that
pornography would be found on his computer.
After his motion was denied, Featherly pleaded guilty to
receiving child pornography, 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(2)—though
reserving the right to appeal the denial of his motion—and
was sentenced to 144 months’ imprisonment.
On appeal Featherly challenges the conclusion that there
was no Franks violation requiring suppression of the evi‐
dence. Under Franks, evidence seized under a warrant must
be suppressed when the defendant shows that “(1) the affida‐
No. 15‐3854 5
vit in support of the warrant contains false statements or mis‐
leading omissions, (2) the false statements or omissions were
made deliberately or with reckless disregard for the truth, and
(3) probable cause would not have existed without the false
statements and/or omissions.” United States v. Williams, 718
F.3d 644, 647 (7th Cir. 2013); see Franks, 438 U.S. at 155–56.
Featherly focuses on the first prong and maintains that
Hauser’s affidavit falsely stated that an IP address belonged
to the user’s computer. In Featherly’s view the IP address was
assigned only to his modem, and the identity of the particular
device using the modem at the time in question was un‐
known. This confusion, Featherly continues, kept the war‐
rant‐issuing judge from considering the possibility that some‐
one else in the trailer park had connected to his modem wire‐
lessly, without his knowledge, and used his Internet service
to share child pornography.
We agree with the district judge that there was no inten‐
tional false statement in the affidavit. The statement that the
IP address belonged to the user’s computer was not false. As
the government points out, Hauser specified in his affidavit
that he defined the term “computer” according to the statu‐
tory language of 18 U.S.C. § 1030(e)(1), which includes a
“communications facility directly related to or operating in
conjunction with” a computer. One such “communications fa‐
cility” is Featherly’s modem since it’s a device that operates
in conjunction with a computer to enable communication
with others over the Internet. The affidavit could have been
more precise, as the magistrate judge and the district judge
both noted, but it accurately stated that the Internet user who
was sharing child pornography was using an IP address con‐
nected to Featherly’s service account.
6 No. 15‐3854
We also agree with the district judge and the magistrate
judge that Hauser’s statement about an IP address belonging
to a particular computer was not significant to the finding of
probable cause because probable cause was sufficiently estab‐
lished by the tracing of the IP address to Featherly’s modem.
While an unknown user conceivably could connect to an‐
other’s modem through an unsecured wireless network, the
record does not reflect that Featherly had such a network.
Further, probable cause requires only “facts sufficient to in‐
duce a reasonably prudent person to believe that a
search … will uncover evidence of a crime,” United States v.
Gregory, 795 F.3d 735, 741 (7th Cir. 2015) (quoting United States
v. Roth, 201 F.3d 888, 892 (7th Cir. 2000)), and the connection
between an IP address and a modem at an Internet sub‐
scriber’s residence is sufficient to justify a search, see, e.g.,
United States v. Vosburgh, 602 F.3d 512, 526–27 (3d Cir. 2010)
(agreeing with other circuits that “evidence that the user of a
computer employing a particular IP address possessed or
transmitted child pornography can support a search warrant
for the physical premises linked to that IP address”); United
States v. Perez, 484 F.3d 735, 740 (5th Cir. 2007) (acknowledg‐
ing possibility that neighbors could have used unsecured
wireless connection but concluding that “it remained likely
that the source of the transmissions [of child pornography]
was inside [the] residence” to which the IP address was as‐
signed).
AFFIRMED.