[Editor’s Note: The following letter is in part a response to the March Glenn County Observer story, “How Swift workers found the kiddie porn”. Cynthia Hardie is scheduled to be sentenced tomorrow, Friday, July 2.]
Editor:
This trucking company’s story doesn’t really add up as they tell it. It makes a lot more sense when we know additional information. I am Cynthia Hardie’s brother, and I know a few more details. However, much of what I have written involves a modest amount of speculation. I know additional facts, but I don’t know everything there is to know. I suspect that an actual effort to investigate, i.e. independent interviews, law enforcement/company phone records, video surveillance, etc. would go a long way towards resolving some of that speculation.
I. What the article doesn’t tell us
From what we read in the article, we might reasonably assume that law enforcement’s involvement began on March 1, 2021. This is factually untrue, but to know this requires information that was not available to the author of this article.
On March 12, 2021, the day following Cynthia’s arrest, two search warrants were executed by law enforcement in Rapid City, South Dakota. One was for her mother’s home where she lived, and the other was for Cynthia’s storage unit. Her mother was present when police searched the house.
In a conversation that I had with my mother regarding the search, she said, “He[A police officer] told me Cynthia was taken to a hospital in December in Woodland California, and a nurse saw something suspicious. she reported it to the police so the police had to investigate.”
Cynthia informed me that her lock screen on her phone had a fully clothed anime character. For those who are not familiar with anime art, often the characters are young, heroic, and drawn in overtly sexual ways. Combine this with an unwashed, unshaven, transgender trucker in her mid 40’s, and it isn’t too difficult to understand how a nurse’s imagination might begin to fill in the blanks.
The problem for law enforcement is that a perfectly legal image and a nurse’s creative speculation is not enough for a search warrant. However, combined with the knowledge of a previous no-contest plea in 1998 in Nevada to “Annoying a minor” (On December 20, 2002, The Nevada state supreme court upheld a lower appellate court’s ruling that this law was facially void and unconstitutional – case no. 38582), it is reasonable to believe they felt compelled to investigate as the Rapid City police officer stated. This leads to the following intuitive logic:
1. Police in northern California felt compelled to investigate in December, 2020 or sometime shortly after
2. They subsequently did investigate. likely prior to march 1, 2021
3. They learned which company she worked for
4. They likely spoke with her employers prior to March 1, 2021
5. They were likely aware that Cynthia’s truck was parked in Dunnigan or that it was there at one time.
6. In conversations with her employers, they likely learned that Cynthia’s possessions were in a storage area
7. They still knew that they didn’t have enough for a search warrant
8. Perhaps law enforcement suggested, directly or indirectly, that they look??
If this is true, and it seems reasonable to think that it, or some minor variation of it, is likely, then her employers had a radically different motive to search her belongings. However, in doing so for that reason, they would be, knowingly or unknowingly, acting as agents of the state. Acting as agents of the state, they would be limited in the same way the state is limited in conducting unwarranted searches.
So, perhaps an alternative motive to search was fabricated (by who? I have no idea). Unfortunately, the alternative motive defies all rational thought as follows:
II. Summary of events from the article and personal knowledge with commentary
1. After going to the hospital in December, Cynthia was instructed by Swift to leave her truck at the Pilot truck stop in Dunnigan since their insurance wouldn’t cover her driving the vehicle back to South Dakota in her condition. Cynthia then rented a car to drive home, had surgery in January, and was not allowed to return to work until medically cleared. Hence, She had every rational reason to believe that she would be returning to her truck after dealing with her medical issues, her property was not abandoned, she was still an employee, and her employers knew this.
2. We also know she was still an employee, because when she was finally medically cleared she was instructed to pick up a truck in Salt Lake City, Utah and drive to Willows, CA to pick up her belongings. She was paid for that drive. She also had several telephone conversations with her employers while she was recovering.
3. Since Swift employees were the ones that cleaned out her truck and put her belongings into the cardboard box, They knew who the property belonged to. I’m guessing that they even wrote her name on the box.
4. Since she was a current employee, They knew her current phone number and address. They could have simply mailed her property to her like any sensible employer would have done for their employees. If they wanted her to pay for the shipping, they knew how to contact her. They had no valid reason to throw her property away.
5. Hansel wrote (or was coached to write since his email seems ready made for a search warrant request), “I wanted to make sure there were no family photos that would be lost if thrown in the trash.” I must confess. I threw-up a little bit in my mouth when I read this nonsense. So, a picture of Cynthia and her mom or dog would have been enough for Hansel to defy his boss’s orders to throw it all away? Ridiculous. Furthermore, he could have simply put the SD card into an envelope and mailed it for the cost of a 55 cent stamp without having to violate Cynthia’s right to privacy.
6. While the trucking company does have the right to make their truck available for other drivers to use, and the discovery of electronic devices during the cleaning and removing of personal property from that vehicle sensibly has no expectation of privacy, the CONTENTS of those electronic devices do retain an expectation of privacy. First, the contents are not knowable from the process of cleaning and removing property from the truck. Second, discovering the contents of those devices requires an invasive action that is not related to making the vehicle available to other drivers. Finally, invasive actions like turning on a camera that doesn’t belong to the company, removing an SD card from that camera, inserting that SD card into another computer, or viewing its contents all require Cynthia’s permission which they did not have.
7. The article stated, “He [Adams] was the only person in the vehicle when he drove it from Dunnigan. He did not tamper with anything inside the vehicle.” It also said, “Adams found the tractor secure when he arrived, with the windows up and the doors locked.” and, “They found it secure but filthy inside.” With so much effort put towards establishing a solid chain of custody of the evidence, I can not help but notice a glaringly obvious hole – the storage area. Not only do we not know how secure the storage area was, we don’t even know how long Cynthia’s possessions remained there. When did they pick up the truck? Does the company keep logs of what they do? Is the area locked? Under video surveillance? Do all the employees have access? just a few? Perhaps this was addressed in the actual search warrant from which this article is derived, but it would be pretty suspicious if it wasn’t. If the company does keep logs of when the truck was picked up, or perhaps the employees were able to recall when but was not cited, or that the level of security was lacking, did the detective gloss over the weakness of this possible custody hole in order to pull the wool over the eyes of the judge?
III. Conclusion
If my theory is reasonably close to correct, then the search warrant obtained from this sequence of events is likely defective. This would have a cascading set of consequences that would likely devastate the state’s case. The evidence would be gone. Probable cause for the interview would be gone. Additional evidence collected from the interview would be gone. And the South Dakota warrants would be defective as well.
It’s a tragedy that Cynthia’s lawyer didn’t do his job.
Ron Rieger
San Jose
The Glenn County Observer 