## Facts

- Frederick W. Butler, Jr. was a student at the University of Maine’s Lewiston–Auburn College with access to a campus computer lab.
- A university employee observed a “frozen image” on a university computer screen that the employee believed depicted pedophilia and reported it to university authorities.
- The university’s investigation found additional pornographic images on the hard drives of two university lab computers Butler had used.
- Law enforcement obtained the two computers’ hard drives and the university’s session logs reflecting when Butler used the lab computers.
- Butler was indicted on four counts of knowingly receiving child pornography over the Internet, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(2)(A), with an allegation of a prior qualifying conviction.

## Issues

1. Whether Butler had a reasonable expectation of privacy under the Fourth Amendment in (a) university computer-usage logs and (b) the contents of hard drives on shared university lab computers he used, such that access to those materials required suppression.
2. Whether the indictment should be dismissed.
3. Whether trial should be continued.

## Decision

- The district court denied the motion to suppress, holding Butler failed to establish an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in the university’s logs or in hard drives of shared university lab computers on this record.
- The court emphasized there was no automatic (“generic”) reasonable expectation of privacy for shared computer usage; the defendant had to prove reasonableness in the specific computing environment.
- The court denied Butler’s motion to dismiss the indictment.
- The court denied Butler’s motion to continue the trial.

## Legal Principles

- A defendant seeking Fourth Amendment protection must show (1) a subjective expectation of privacy and (2) an expectation society recognizes as objectively reasonable.
- The defendant bears the burden to prove that expectation of privacy is reasonable under the particular facts, especially in shared, institution-owned computing environments.
- In the absence of evidence such as confidentiality policies, password protection, restricted access, or practices limiting institutional review, a user of shared institutional computers may lack an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in usage logs and hard-drive contents.
- If the defendant lacks a protected privacy interest in the material searched, the Fourth Amendment does not provide a basis to suppress the evidence.

## Conclusion

The court refused to suppress session logs and hard-drive evidence from shared university lab computers because Butler did not prove any facts (such as policies, representations, or access restrictions) establishing an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy, and it also denied his motions to dismiss the indictment and continue the trial.


United States v. Butler, 151 F. Supp. 2d 82 (D. Me. 2001)