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AnonTechie writes:

A man convicted of child porn possession has been fighting to reclaim his personal emails and photos from the government, but so far has been rebuffed by its claims that separating the good and bad files would be too difficult to pursue. A lower court agreed with the government's assessment of the situation, but this has now been overturned by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

As the ruling [pdf link] notes, the lower court failed in its duty to shift the burden of proof from the convicted man to the government.

The panel held that the district court’s decision not to put the burden of proof on the government was legal error, where the defendant filed the Rule 41(g) motion after he pleaded guilty and the government no longer needed his property as evidence. The panel held that the government could not have carried its burden of proof had the district court correctly placed it on the government, where the government failed to submit any evidence of the difficulty and costs of segregating the defendant’s data, which it claimed was a legitimate reason for retention of the non-contraband files.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150103/12585929589/appeals-court-orders-government-to-return-non-child-porn-files-to-convicted-man.shtml