EAU CLAIRE — An Eau Claire man with a long history in the court system — and three currently open cases — was in court Friday for another felony prosecution.
The three earlier cases against Jason Rezarch, 52, involved charges ranging from driving with a revoked license and misdemeanor theft to drug possession. In April a new filing brought six counts of possession of child pornography.
According to the criminal complaint officers were searching Rezarch’s cell phone as part of one of the other cases, though it does not specify which. The officers flagged potential child pornography and sought a search warrant for that specific offense.
The images were among many more pornographic files depicting adults. But these showed prepubescent children, both male and female.
When investigators spoke with Rezarch about the images, he said any nude photos were from a nudist website and that he assumed everyone in them was over the age of 18 since they were publicly accessible. When shown a sanitized version of one of the pictures, Rezarch conceded the person shown was “very young.”
He continued to insist he had downloaded the images from a nudist site and said he didn’t “understand why I would have saved that image.”
Each of the charges is a Class D felony. Such offenses are punishable by up to 15 years in prison and 10 years’ extended supervision. Fines can reach $100,000. Rezarch has pleaded not guilty. He is next due in court on Sept. 9.
The application for a second search warrant, even though the police were already searching the phone illustrates one of the ways searches and evidence work. Generally speaking, warrants must be limited in scope, addressing an effort to find evidence for a specific offense. So, when the officers found evidence that pointed to an offense that went beyond the original warrant’s limits, a new one was needed.
By way of example, if a search warrant specifies a specific room of a house, officers can’t search the others. If the warrant covers all of the house, but only the house, they can’t search a detached garage or back yard shed.
If officers ignore that and collect evidence that lies outside the scope of the warrant the court may find it to be inadmissible, potentially ruining the case.
Justia, a website that specializes in legal information, notes that the U.S. Supreme Court has found that warrants are required for digital devices, but “cloud storage remains a subject of contention, with different courts reaching different conclusions.”