Wednesday, August 19, 2026
Page 4
Eighth U.S. Circuit Validates California Law Requiring Obedience to Out-of-State Warrants
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has held that a suppression motion was properly denied in a case where a man exchanged sexually explicit images with a 15-year-old and was caught after Snap, Inc., located in Santa Monica, and Google. headquartered in Santa Clara County’s City of Mountain View, provided records, in obedience to a search warrant, leading to ascertainment of the defendant’s identity.
The court acted in the case on Monday.
A man who had a Snapchat user account identifying him as “kingnoob9000” was revealed, through use of Google and Snap records, to be Nicholas Peterson. The warrants were issued by a Nebraska judge, acting pursuant to a state statute authorizing extraterritorial searches.
A federal prosecution ensued.
California’s Consent
Peterson—who pled guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri to attempted production, possession, and receipt of child pornography, while preserving his right to appeal the denial of a suppression motion—contested the validity of a Nebraska warrant in California. The government responded in the appellee’s brief:
“Peterson’s challenge fails because Nebraska state law authorized the search warrants to be executed out of state, the providers consented to service by doing business in Nebraska, and California consented to service by passing a statute that directs its domestic corporations to treat out-of-state warrants as they would treat in-state warrants.”
California Penal Code §1524.2(c)(1) provides:
“A California corporation that provides electronic communication services or remote computing services to the general public, when served with a warrant issued by another state to produce records that would reveal the identity of the customers using those services, data stored by, or on behalf of, the customer, the customer’s usage of those services, the recipient or destination of communications sent to or from those customers, or the content of those communications, shall produce those records as if that warrant had been issued by a California court….”
Passes Constitutional Muster
The Eighth Circuit declared, in an opinion by Circuit Judge Leonard Grasz:
“California’s requirement that Snap and Google must comply with search warrants issued out of state is constitutional….Such comity does not offend the Constitution.”
For that proposition, Grasz cited the 1977 Illinois Supreme Court decision in Illinois v. Wolgemuth which declares:
“Whether a valid foreign warrant is effective in Illinois is a matter of State, not constitutional, law. A suspect’s constitutional right to have a neutral magistrate determine whether probable cause exists for his arrest is not undermined by Illinois’ choice to extend comity to the determination of a magistrate from another State.”
The Eighth Circuit acted in United States v. Peterson, 25-1788.
Copyright 2026, Metropolitan News Company