USA v. Kenneth Mininger

FOR PUBLICATION

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Eleventh Circuit
____________________
No. 25-10073
____________________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
versus

KENNETH MICHAEL MININGER,
Defendant-Appellant.

____________________
Appeal f rom the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Alabama
D.C. Docket No. 3:22-cr-00249-LCB-HNJ-1
____________________

Before B
RASHER, KIDD, and WILSON, Circuit Judges.
B
RASHER, Circuit Judge:
This appeal is about the reasonable expectation of privacy—
or the lack thereof. Kenneth Mininger secretly placed video cam-
eras in shared rooms in his ex-wife’s house. He used these cameras
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2 Opinion of the Court 25-10073
to record his ex-wife’s minor daughter undressing. The police ex-
amined the SD cards attached to these cameras without a warrant
and, based on the cards’ contents, obtained a warrant for Min-
inger’s other devices. On those devices, law enforcement found
large amounts of child sexual abuse material for which Mininger
was convicted. He brings a Fourth Amendment challenge, arguing
that the district court should have suppressed all of this evidence
and that the resulting warrant was overbroad. But, in large part be-
cause he had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the SD cards
he had placed, unsecured, in a shared room in his ex-wife’s house,
Mininger’s Fourth Amendment arguments fail. Accordingly, we af-
firm his convictions.
I.
Over Thanksgiving 2021, Mininger visited his ex-wife S.H.
and two of her minor children from a prior relationship. During
this visit, Mininger stayed (alone) in one of the children’s bedrooms
and had unfettered access to the house.
Over the course of Mininger’s visit, S.H.’s seventeen-year-
old daughter found a camera surreptitiously placed in her bedroom
and directed at her bed. She further found a camera in the bath-
room that was shared by the children and Mininger. The daughter
determined that each of the devices contained an SD storage card
and, because neither was password protected, she reviewed the
stored footage. The footage included recordings of the daughter
and a friend watching a movie in her room. She promptly informed
her mother and showed her the cameras.
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25-10073 Opinion of the Court 3
At this point, S.H. confronted Mininger, who denied placing
the cameras. She repeatedly told Mininger to get out of her house.
Mininger did so, taking one of the cameras with him; but S.H. and
her daughter had removed the SD cards from both cameras.
S.H. called the police and, when a sheriff’s deputy arrived,
consented in writing to a police search of the SD cards. The police
reviewed the contents of the cards, which included footage from
May 2018, late 2019, and early 2020. Included in these videos was
footage of S.H.’s seventeen-year-old daughter undressing when she
was between fourteen and sixteen years old.
Based on this information, law enforcement obtained search
warrants for Mininger’s residence, any vehicles in which he was the
occupant, his devices, and person. The warrant for the house au-
thorized the seizure and examination of devices that may contain
evidence of “Child Pornography and Sexual Exploitation.” Dkt. 62
at 49.
Upon executing this warrant, the police located four devices
containing child pornography. Mininger had used a program called
VeraCrypt to encrypt and conceal his files. This program caused
the child pornography contained on his drives to “present as ran-
dom data.” Dkt. 54 at 130. Nevertheless, a forensic examiner was
able to identify suspicious encrypted files. He then ran a brute-force
attack on the files, which were protected by two layers of pass-
words. After some effort, he was successful in accessing the files’
contents, which included recordings documenting Mininger’s sex-
ual abuse of an eight-year-old.
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4 Opinion of the Court 25-10073
The United States charged Mininger with 16 counts related
to the production and possession of child pornography. Mininger
moved to suppress the evidence obtained from the search of the
SD cards, arguing that the search required a warrant. He further
sought to suppress evidence obtained from the subsequent
searches of his electronic devices because the search warrants were
tainted by the unlawful search of the SD cards. Separately, he ar-
gued that the warrants were overbroad.
The district court denied Mininger’s motion, and Mininger
entered a guilty plea to two of the charged counts. The district
court reasoned that, although Mininger had a reasonable expecta-
tion of privacy in the SD cards, S.H. had authority to consent to the
search. Mininger’s guilty plea was conditional, as he reserved his
right to appeal the denial of his motion to suppress. The court then
sentenced Mininger to 600 months’ imprisonment, and Mininger
timely appealed.
II.
We apply a “mixed standard of review” to the denial of a
motion to suppress evidence, “assessing the district court’s factual
findings for clear error and its application of the law to facts de
novo.” United States v. Ewing, 140 F.4th 1339, 1346 (11th Cir. 2025).
III.
This appeal raises two questions. First, does a homeowner’s
overnight guest have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the
contents of a recording device when the guest places that device in
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25-10073 Opinion of the Court 5
a shared space without the homeowner’s knowledge or consent,
fails to secure the contents, and uses it to invade the homeowner’s
privacy? Second, must a warrant to search physical electronic de-
vices be limited in time or category as to the electronic files that
may be reviewed? We answer both questions “no.” We discuss
them in turn below.
A.
Mininger first argues that the police conducted a warrantless
search of his SD cards in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights.
The Fourth Amendment protects “[t]he right of the people to be
secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unrea-
sonable searches and seizures.” U.S. C
ONST. amend. IV. A search
occurs in two ways: when the government obtains information by
“trespassory activity . . . intruding on a constitutionally protected
area,” United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400, 406 n.3 (2012), and “when
an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to consider rea-
sonable is infringed,” United States v. Karo, 468 U.S. 705, 712 (1984)
(quoting United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113 (1984)).
Although Mininger does not argue that a physical trespass
occurred, he asserts that the police invaded his reasonable expecta-
tion of privacy in the SD cards that he placed in S.H.’s home. The
district court denied Mininger’s motion to suppress, but it agreed
that Mininger had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the con-
tents of the SD cards. The government argues that the district
court’s expectation-of-privacy conclusion was in error. Because we
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6 Opinion of the Court 25-10073
can “affirm the denial of a motion to suppress on any ground sup-
ported by the record,” United States v. Cohen, 38 F.4th 1364, 1386
(11th Cir. 2022), we consider this question anew.
Mininger bears the burden to demonstrate that a search, as
defined under the Fourth Amendment, occurred. United States v.
King, 509 F.3d 1338, 1341 (11th Cir. 2007). As relevant here, he must
do so by establishing (1) that he had a subjective expectation of pri-
vacy and (2) “that the privacy expectation [is] one that society is
prepared to recognize as reasonable.” Id. (citation modified).
Whether a defendant has a reasonable expectation of privacy “is
determined by an examination of the totality of the circum-
stances.” United States v. Sarda-Villa, 760 F.2d 1232, 1235 (11th Cir.
1985).
Considering the totality of the circumstances, we conclude
that Mininger had no expectation of privacy in the SD cards that
society would be prepared to recognize as reasonable. Put another
way, whatever his subjective expectation of privacy, there was no
objectively reasonable expectation that the contents of the SD
cards would remain private. After all, he placed the video cameras
and their attendant SD cards in a shared area of S.H.’s home where
they could easily be discovered, he failed to protect the contents
with a password, and he used those cards to invade the privacy of
S.H.’s family members. In such circumstances, Mininger’s expecta-
tion of privacy in the contents of the SD cards is “not only unrea-
sonable, but foolhardy.” United States v. Miravalles, 280 F.3d 1328,
1333 (11th Cir. 2002).
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25-10073 Opinion of the Court 7
For starters, a person ordinarily lacks a reasonable expecta-
tion of privacy in computer files that he makes readily accessible to
third parties. King, 509 F.3d at 1341–42. In such an event, the files
are “akin to items stored in the unsecured common areas of a
multi-unit apartment building or put in a dumpster accessible to
the public.” Id. at 1342. Here, S.H., her children, or any guest could
examine the contents of these SD cards without going into Min-
inger’s room. Because Mininger placed the SD cards—and thus the
cards’ contents—in a shared area, liable to be discovered and exam-
ined by a third party, and beyond his area of control, he cannot
claim to have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their content.
Id.; see also United States v. Hall, 47 F.3d 1091, 1097 (11th Cir. 1995)
(holding that there is no objectively reasonable expectation of pri-
vacy when a defendant does not “take sufficient steps to restrict the
public’s access to [his] discarded garbage”).
Further, the cameras—located as they were in the bedroom
and bathroom of S.H.’s minor daughter—were self-evidently
placed to illegally invade the privacy of S.H.’s children. We have
previously “found permissible warrantless searches where the con-
tainer itself and the circumstances under which the police obtained
it indicate that the contents are contraband.” United States v. Epps,
613 F.3d 1093, 1098 (11th Cir. 2010). So too, here. No one could
reasonably expect a right to privacy in voyeuristic recordings made
under these circumstances. Accordingly, the warrantless search of
the illicitly placed cameras and their SD cards was permissible.
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8 Opinion of the Court 25-10073
For his part, Mininger points to Minnesota v. Olson and the
“legitimate expectation of privacy” overnight guests have in their
host’s home. 495 U.S. 91, 98 (1990). No doubt, an overnight guest
retains a reasonable expectation of privacy notwithstanding that a
host could, theoretically, look through his things while he is out.
The Court in Olson stressed that this expectation of privacy is
rooted in social norms and “the everyday expectations of privacy
that we all share.” Id. “Staying overnight in another’s home is a
longstanding social custom that serves functions recognized as val-
uable by society.” Id. Because “[w]e will all be hosts and we will all
be guests many times in our lives . . . society recognizes that a
houseguest has a legitimate expectation of privacy in his host’s
home.” Id.
The social custom underpinning Olson does not help Min-
inger here. An overnight houseguest has the highest legitimate ex-
pectation of privacy in his own quarters. See United States v. Rackley,
742 F.2d 1266, 1270 (11th Cir. 1984). But, when guests leave unse-
cured belongings in shared areas, such as a bathroom, the expecta-
tion of privacy is much weaker. Id.; see also Olson, 495 U.S. at 98–
99. And a guest’s reasonable expectation of privacy assumes a de-
gree of reciprocity—the host and third parties will respect a guest’s
right to privacy just as the guest and third parties will respect the
host’s privacy. Consequently, no houseguest has a reasonable ex-
pectation of privacy in voyeuristic recordings made in his host’s
home without his host’s knowledge or consent. When a guest so
plainly exceeds the scope of societal custom and his host’s license,
any expectation of privacy becomes unreasonable.
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25-10073 Opinion of the Court 9
For the above reasons, we reject Mininger’s argument that
the Fourth Amendment bars admission of the evidence gathered
from the warrantless search of his SD cards.
B.
We turn now to Mininger’s argument that the warrants is-
sued for his residence, vehicles, devices, and person were over-
broad. Specifically, he complains that the warrants did not place
“available, appropriate limits” on law enforcement’s search of Min-
inger’s devices. Appellant’s Br. at 37. He says that, because law en-
forcement had probable cause to search for pictures of specific peo-
ple made during a specific time period, the Fourth Amendment re-
quires them to have used forensics tools to limit their search to
electronic files created of those specific people or during that par-
ticular time period. We disagree.
We have recognized that the Fourth Amendment prohibits
the government from engaging in a “general, exploratory rummag-
ing in a person’s belongings.” United States v. Wuagneux, 683 F.2d
1343, 1348 (11th Cir. 1982) (quoting Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403
U.S. 443, 467 (1971)). And, when addressing searches of cloud ac-
counts, we have suggested that time limits on “the scope of a
search warrant for a cloud account” are a good way to ensure that
warrants are not overbroad. United States v. McCall, 84 F.4th 1317,
1328 (11th Cir. 2023).
Nevertheless, our case law does not require that a warrant
impose a time limit or a similar restriction on the search of an elec-
tronic storage device. We distinguished between electronic devices
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10 Opinion of the Court 25-10073
and cloud accounts in United States v. Blake, 868 F.3d 960 (11th Cir.
2017). There, we stressed that the “means of hiding evidence on a
hard drive—obscure folders, misnamed files, encrypted data—are
not currently possible in the context of a” cloud-based account. Id.
at 974. “Hard drive searches require,” as the facts of this case high-
light, “time-consuming electronic forensic investigation with spe-
cial equipment, and conducting that kind of search in the defend-
ant’s home would be impractical, if not impossible.” Id. “By con-
trast,” with respect to cloud-based accounts, “the government need
only send a request with the specific data sought and [the cloud
service provider] will respond with precisely that data.” Id.
The facts of this case underscore the difference between the
search of a cloud-based account and the search of an electronic stor-
age device. The search warrants here were not directed at cloud
accounts under the control of a third party; they were directed at
electronic storage devices in Mininger’s physical possession. When
these devices were in his possession, Mininger had gone to great
lengths to obfuscate the nature of his data, employing the Ver-
aCrypt program to conceal the files. The search required that a fo-
rensic examiner break the encryption of Mininger’s illicit files. This
effort is a far cry from “send[ing] a request with the specific data
sought” to a cloud-service provider and receiving exactly that data.
Id. It is not feasible for a warrant to limit the scope of a “hard drive
search[],” id, in the same way a warrant might limit the search of a
cloud account under the control of a third party.
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25-10073 Opinion of the Court 11
A warrant must be as “specific as the circumstances and na-
ture of activity under investigation permit[s].” Wuagneux, 683 F.2d
at 1349; see also United States v. Strauss, 678 F.2d 886, 892 (11th Cir.
1982) (“A search warrant must indeed be sufficiently precise as not
to permit a general search, but the test is . . . reasonableness . . . . ”).
Here, the relevant warrant was limited to seizing “records relating
to Child Pornography and Sexual Exploitation.” Accordingly, it
was not overbroad.
IV.
For the reasons outlined in this opinion, Mininger’s convic-
tions are AFFIRMED.

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