QuickTake:

Citing what it called “a heretofore unheard-of privacy right for users of privately maintained but publicly accessible wi-fi networks,” the Lane County District Attorney’s Office said its case against a 73-year-old Oakridge man was “fatally compromised.”

Child pornography charges will be dismissed against a 73-year-old Oakridge man whose conviction was overturned by the state’s highest court, the Lane County District Attorney’s Office announced Monday, April 6.

The Oregon Supreme Court ruled March 26 that steps taken during an investigation of Randall De Witt Simons’ activity on a public Wi-Fi network violated his right to privacy under the state’s constitution.

“In light of the Supreme Court’s decision, the Lane County District Attorney’s Office has determined the case is fatally compromised and we will have to dismiss it,” Lane County District Attorney Christopher Parosa said in a news release Monday.

Simons first gained notoriety in connection with the 1996 unsolved slaying of JonBenét Ramsey. In news articles following the death of the 6-year-old girl in Boulder, Colorado, Simons was reportedly identified in 1998 as the child’s photographer.

In Lane County, he was convicted September 2021 of 15 counts of first-degree encouraging child sexual abuse and sentenced to 10 years in prison, according to the district attorney’s office and court records.

Oregon Department of Corrections records show his earliest possible release date before the dismissal of charges would have been Dec. 25, 2030. As of Monday morning, he was shown in online records as still being held at Two Rivers Correctional Institution in Umatilla.

In 2018 and 2019, Simons used the public Wi-Fi network of an A&W restaurant across the street from his Oakridge apartment, according to the district attorney’s office news release and court documents.

 “The wi-fi network was free, intended for the restaurant’s customers, did not have a password, and required users to click a button to accept its terms and conditions,” the district attorney’s office said Monday. “The terms included provisions that users must comply with all laws and that the restaurant may cooperate with legal authorities in the investigation of any suspected or alleged crime.”

In July 2018, the network’s operator noticed log entries showing someone using the network had accessed child abuse images and called police, who began an investigation.

“The operator asked whether the restaurant should block the device from the wi-fi network. The investigating officer suggested that restaurant instead keep an eye on the device to help determine the identity of its user,” the district attorney’s office said. “Over the course of a year, the restaurant voluntarily gave the officer logs of that device’s activity on its wi-fi network.”

Police were able to identify Simons as a suspect and in June 2019 searched his home, seizing “numerous electronic devices from the defendant” and discovering “hundreds of pictures depicting child sexual abuse,” according to the district attorney’s office.

But while Lane County Circuit Court and also the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled that Simons lacked any right to privacy, the Oregon Supreme Court ruled differently.

The Oregon Supreme Court found that “the mere fact that a person accesses the internet through a public network does not eliminate the Article I, section 9 right to privacy that exists for one’s internet browsing activities,” as stated in the Oregon Constitution.

The state Supreme Court opinion cited the section that reads, “[n]o law shall violate the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable search, or seizure.”

In the news release, the District Attorney’s office said the Oregon Supreme Court ruling, which stated that police needed a warrant to obtain the logs that the restaurant voluntarily turned over, “created a heretofore unheard-of privacy right for users of privately maintained but publicly accessible wi-fi networks.”

Kyle Krohn, a senior deputy public defender with the Oregon Public Defense Commission, argued the case before the Oregon Supreme Court. 

Among organizations filing friend-of-the-court briefs in the case were the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon.