Federal appeals court upholds Casper man’s conviction for child abuse

CASPER, Wyoming – A Casper man sentenced last year to 170 years in prison in a child sex abuse case lost his appeal Wednesday, according to federal court records.

On July 3, three judges from the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver released their 20-page opinion, outlining the course of the case and Salvador Salas Jr.’s so far unsuccessful arguments regarding search warrants and a confession.

“We dissent (with Salas) and affirm (the district court’s ruling),” wrote judges Gregory Phillips, Stephanie Seymour and Michael Murphy.

After a three-day trial that ended on January 25, 2023, a federal court jury found Salas guilty on all six counts of child sexual abuse contained in the indictment handed down by a grand jury in July 2021.

On April 13, 2023, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Scott Skavdahl announced the sentence—30 years each for five counts of production and 20 years for one count of possession—and added that what Salas did to the then 13-year-old girl fell just short of murder.

“They took a child, groomed him, drugged him and sexually raped him at the tender age of 13,” he said, noting that Salas also recorded the acts.

The crime also affected her entire family, he said, adding: “What you have done to this family is indescribable. It requires a harsh punishment.”

During the trial, some of the evidence about child sexual abuse was so horrific that it caused at least one juror to vomit, according to some witnesses’ testimony.

The case began in February 2021 when Casper police received a tip that a girl had been admitted to Wyoming Medical Center for methamphetamine use and that the alleged perpetrator may have possessed child sexual abuse materials. Police investigated the case and then turned it over to the Natrona County District Attorney, who forwarded it to federal court.

A week after Skavdahl imposed the 170-year prison sentence, Salas appealed the ruling to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

On Wednesday, 15 months later, the appeals court judges announced their verdicts, detailing the history of the case, beginning with a tip-off about drug possession and a subsequent search warrant for illegal drugs that led to the discovery of child pornography.

Before the trial in Casper, Salas argued that all evidence contained in the arrest warrant should be suppressed because it violated the Fourth Amendment, the statement said.

In a ruling on the motion to exclude rights, Judge Scott Skavdahl ruled that images of the victim were discovered on an iPhone that was lawfully seized, making the discovery of the child sexual abuse images unavoidable, he wrote.

The three appellate judges wrote that Salas made the same argument, that the officers violated his Fourth Amendment rights. “Mr. Salas argues that the district court erred in denying his motions to suppress,” they wrote.

They examined the Fourth Amendment, which enshrines the right to protection from “unreasonable searches and seizures.”

If law enforcement wants to obtain a search warrant, they wrote, “it must be supported by probable cause and must accurately describe the locations to be searched and the evidence to be seized.” Officers must also “reasonably conduct the search and seizure,” the judges wrote, citing a previous case.

Salas argued that the Wyoming District Court had wrongly denied his motion to suppress because, among other things, it had misapplied the “inevitable discovery doctrine.”

The three judges responded that the first search warrant was limited to searching Salas’ person, residence and vehicle for drugs and drug-related materials, including “written or electronically stored” records.

Salas argued that the first search warrant was merely to seize his phone, not to search it, adding that a cell phone is not an object but also a “place” like a house.

The three judges found that a search of the cell phone, in this case for information about drugs and drug trafficking, must be conducted strictly in accordance with the terms of the search warrant. The computer forensic expert who searched the phone was looking exclusively for drug-related matters, and opening a photo app would be part of that standard procedure. There, the forensic expert found images depicting child sexual abuse, a discovery that would have been inevitable.

That led police to obtain a “piggyback search warrant,” the judges wrote. “Everything indicates that police would have sought another search warrant following the discovery of Mr. Salas’ child pornography (by the analyst).”

In his appeal, Salas also argued that incriminating statements he made on March 31, 2021, should have been suppressed because that confession came during an interview about a search of his phone.

“As we have found, the child pornography on Mr. Salas’ iPhone would have been discovered as required by the first warrant. As in the case of Mr. Salas’ motion to suppress the child pornography, the district court was correct in denying Mr. Salas’ motion to suppress his March 31 statements,” the judges wrote.

“We affirm.”

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