United States v. Smith, 919 F.3d 1

In May 2015 Brad Smith, then working for a family, used Google Glass to record six videos of sexual assaults on a 3‑year‑old; he later moved to a pecan farm in Louisiana owned by the victim's family.
HSI agents traced a Yahoo! account linked to child pornography to Smith and traveled to the pecan farm in January 2016 to conduct a knock‑and‑talk investigation.
Agents entered the farm past a gated driveway, encountered Smith near a carport, obtained his e‑mail addresses and, after conversational questioning inside Smith’s residence, he admitted to possessing child pornography.
Agents read a consent form aloud; Smith verbally consented to a search of his laptop and two hard drives, which were seized; later at the HSI office an officer accessed the drives and recovered six videos depicting Smith’s assaults.
Smith was later brought to the police station, Mirandized, and confessed to raping and videotaping the victim; he was indicted on six counts of producing child pornography under 18 U.S.C. § 2251(a).
The district court denied Smith’s motion to suppress (finding consent voluntary and no taint from any alleged entry violation) and sentenced him to a total of 50 years; the First Circuit affirmed.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument (Government)	Defendant's Argument (Smith)	Held
Validity of agents' entry onto farm/curtilage	Entry was lawful or, if not, any illegality was not outcome‑determinative	Gate and driveway were curtilage; entry revoked implied license and therefore unconstitutional	Court assumed arguendo possible illegality but held any prior illegality did not taint later consent; suppression denied
Voluntariness and taint of consent to search devices	Consent was knowing/voluntary; intervening circumstances (reading of consent form, dialogue) attenuated any prior illegality	Consent was coerced by the unlawful entry, deception, and officers' statements about seizing devices	Consent held voluntary; Brown factors (temporal proximity, intervening circumstances, purpose/flagrancy) weighed for admissibility
Admissibility of postseizure statements/confession	Statements were admissible (Miranda warnings given at station; confession voluntary)	Initial statements at residence should be suppressed as fruit of unlawful entry and without Miranda	District court credited voluntariness and Miranda waiver; First Circuit affirmed admission of statements
Multiplicity / unit of prosecution under §2251(a)	Each separate visual depiction (video) is a proper unit of prosecution	All six videos arose from a single continuous episode and should merge into one offense (max 30 years)	Court held proper unit is each separate video; convictions not multiplicitous; 50‑year sentence permissible

Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U.S. 177 (consent can cure Fourth Amendment defects)
Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590 (factors for attenuation of taint from prior illegality)
Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1 (curtilage and the home’s core Fourth Amendment protection)
Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170 (open fields doctrine)
United States v. Dunn, 480 U.S. 294 (four‑part curtilage test)
Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (fruit of the poisonous tree / attenuation principles)
United States v. Verrecchia, 196 F.3d 294 (First Circuit on ambiguous unit‑of‑prosecution arguments)