Sloan
An Indiana appellate court has upheld a Greenwood man’s 105-year sentence for child molesting.
The Indiana Court of Appeals ruled Friday that a Greenwood Police detective sufficiently established probable cause for a search warrant for the home of William Scott Sloan, 39. Sloan was sentenced to 105 years on three counts of child molesting as a Level 1 felony in Johnson County Superior Court 3 in September 2022. A month earlier, a jury found Sloan guilty of all charges after deliberating for only 16 minutes.
Sloan was charged in December 2019 after a 12-year-old told police he touched them inappropriately and forced them to have sex with him. He was accused of committing these acts between Sept. 1, 2019, and Dec. 9, 2019, according to a probable cause affidavit.
Sloan’s appeal was based on the use of videos during the trial, along with the validity of a search warrant for his Greenwood home.
The Greenwood Police detective used software on a department computer that allowed him to monitor downloads associated with child pornography. It was through this software he found suspected child pornography, and he later was able to determine that the IP address connected to the download was registered to an AT&T account under Sloan’s name, according to court documents.
Before the detective could move forward with his investigation, he found out another officer and a case worker from the Indiana Department of Child Services were planning to visit Sloan’s home to discuss a molestation allegation made against him. The detective, who was concerned about the possible destruction of evidence, then submitted an affidavit to obtain a search warrant for Sloan’s home, court documents show.
The warrant was granted. During the search, officers found two videos of Sloan engaged in sexual activities with a juvenile, according to court documents.
In his appeal, Sloan questioned the appropriateness of admitting the videos as evidence during his trial. He alleged the trial court had erred by admitting the evidence because the probable cause affidavit supporting the warrant had omitted a “material fact” and did not establish a link between him and the alleged crime.
The Indiana Court of Appeals disagreed. They found that the affidavit had met the requirements for the search warrant to be issued for Sloan’s residence, upholding his conviction.
Before his trial, Sloan had asked for a hearing to determine the truthfulness of certain statements in the affidavit, specifically the time the pornography was downloaded. He had also asked to suppress all evidence seized from his home as a result of the search warrant, court documents show.
This motion was denied after a hearing, and the evidence was admitted at trial over his objection.
In his appeal, Sloan said the detective should have informed the court that issued the warrant of the possibility that someone other than himself could have accessed his internet connection and made the file available for download. However, Senior Judge Margret Robb wrote in the appellate court’s opinion that Sloan made no effort to establish that the detective had deliberately lied or had a reckless disregard for the truth.
The appellate court could also not agree with Sloan’s suggestion that the possibility of some unidentified person being able to access his internet to download the pornography was a “material fact” that was crucial to determining probable cause for the warrant.
“This notion is sheer speculation that lacks any factual underpinning,” the opinion says.
Ultimately, the court concluded that despite this possibility, circumstances had established a fair probability that Sloan, as the AT&T subscriber, committed the crime and that evidence of it would be found in his home.
