United States v. Oreckinto

234 F.Supp.3d 360 (2017)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

This case involves a burglary of thousands of cartons of cigarettes that occurred in March 2011 at a warehouse. Surveillance video from inside the warehouse shows that the burglar was someone wearing a mask and otherwise dressed in mostly black clothing. The focus of the trial has been on whether the culprit was D. A grainy photograph derived from the warehouse's surveillance video shows that the burglar was wearing black clothing on his upper body that had the stylized letters 'SP' emblazoned across the chest. P also entered into evidence a photograph of D casually sitting on a motorcycle and facing the camera. This photograph was obtained by law enforcement from the Facebook page of D's spouse, and it was admitted without objection at trial. The photograph shows D wearing a Harley Davidson black leather jacket with at least two layers of clothing underneath. One of those layers is a zipped-down hooded sweatshirt. Although only the interior edges of the sweatshirt are visible in the photograph, it is enough to see that the sweatshirt is black and that it bears some kind of stylized white lettering or design that could be consistent with the type of sweatshirt worn by the masked burglar as shown in the surveillance video. P offered certain images derived from the Internet of the distinctive type and logo-branded sweatshirt that it contends that both the burglar and D were wearing. The lead detective testified at trial that he found these images by means of an Internet search. After he identified the block letters 'SP' on the burglar's clothing as shown in the surveillance video, he ran an Internet search for black-and-white hooded 'SP' sweatshirts, and the search came up with images depicting a 'SouthPole' brand type of sweatshirt. The detective knew 'SouthPole' to be a commercial brand of clothing. No one could determine if the pictures came from the company’s website. Nor could the officer identify the particular web pages or websites from which he copied the images. The detective did not contact any manufacturing company to confirm that it made this particular kind of sweatshirt. D moved in limine to preclude the Internet images of the SouthPole sweatshirt.