PIERRE, S.D. (KELO) — A Sioux Falls man who was found guilty on 15 counts of possessing child pornography has lost his appeal to the South Dakota Supreme Court.
Michael Adam O’Neal argued that his telephone was illegally taken by a Sioux Falls police officer and made other claims.
In a decision publicly released on Thursday, the state’s high court found that then-Circuit Judge Camela Theeler didn’t err in her rulings.
Theeler recently was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as a federal district judge for South Dakota.
Police were tipped off by O’Neal’s then-fiancee on December 7, 2018, after she found on his phone an image of a young girl with her breasts exposed.
A Sioux Falls police officer went to the fast-food restaurant where O’Neal worked and asked for his phone. O’Neal gave him the phone and told him its passcode. The officer didn’t look inside it.
Police later obtained a warrant to inspect the phone on December 11, 2018, and found images of child pornography.
O’Neal’s fiancee also told police that she had other computer materials, including hard drives. Those were retrieved on January 2, 2019, and contained images of child pornography.
A footnote in the Supreme Court decision referred to the testimony of a forensic computer expert, who was the only witness called in O’Neal’s defense: “(Daniel) Meinke testified that O’Neal’s phone contained around 386,000 images, 56,278 of which were pictures on the phone’s camera roll. Additionally, Meinke testified there were approximately 870,000 pictures on the hard drive that contained the alleged child pornography.”
The full decision written by Justice Patricia DeVaney can be found here.
