Illinois' bid to appeal the suppression of search warrant results against former CDBabes.com owner Mike Jones has been denied, more than a year after the state appealed the lower court ruling.
"We held four days of hearings on our motion to suppress last year, and the judge granted our motion," Jones's attorney, Chicago-based J.D. Obenberger, wrote in an email to AVNOnline.com. "The state appealed. Now, the state has been knocked out of the box because it filed its motion to reconsider the judge's ruling a day late, and that renders its notice of appeal ineffective. The appellate court came to the conclusion that it had no appellate jurisdiction."
Obenberger said the state could appeal to the state Supreme Court within 21 days of the appeals court finding, but there is "not much chance" that the state Supreme Court would take the case.
"[T]he State contends that the trial court improperly suppressed the evidence obtained pursuant to the search warrant," wrote Justice Frederick J. Kapala, for the 2nd District Appellate Court of Illinois' three-justice panel. "[Jones] contends that the suppression was proper, but that, in any event, we lack jurisdiction to consider this appeal."
Kapala also rejected a state motion that Jones gave up his right to object to the appeal because he didn't do it in the trial court. "Although it is true that failure to object in the trial court generally waives the issue on appeal," Kapala wrote, "a party cannot consent to or waive appellate jurisdiction. Moreover, an appellate court has an obligation to . . . consider whether jurisdiction exists at any time, even after the parties have briefed the merits of the case."
Trial judge Sharon Prather ordered all evidence produced by the warrant suppressed in early 2004. The warrant involved a raid on Jones's home and office, and Prather held that the warrant was overly broad prior restraint on free expression. The state told the trial court it appealed the suppression order one day before the original April 20, 2004 deadline.
State Attorney Dan Regina opined the warrant should have been divided into individual issues, child porn and obscenity, both of which were covered by the original warrant. Obenberger argued that Regina's argument came down to the seizure of alleged child porn not requiring "pre-seizure judicial review," but Prather ruled there was no way to divide the original warrant into two warrants, and that the original warrant merely let the state seize whatever it wanted.
Jones's legal troubles began after police first questioned him after hearing accusations from undisclosed parties that Jones had photographed underage girls in the nude. He has maintained consistently that he was 2257-compliant and told police candidly how he earned his living. Police were satisfied, but others, including local prosecutors, weren't. They obtained a warrant to raid his home and business in the fall of 2002.
