A recent editorial by The State News has asserted that our office is involved in an "overbearing witch hunt" with regard to student riots ("Seize the day" SN 4/14). I strongly disagree.

The State News editorial states that "police are flirting with limits of the Fourth Amendment." It quotes the Fourth Amendment, stating "the rights of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, shall not be violated, but upon probable cause." In this case, we secured a search warrant to obtain evidence, which is precisely what is required by the Fourth Amendment.

The fact that the student who had the evidence might not have been a confirmed suspect at the time of the issuance of the search warrant does not matter, any more than if a criminal concealed a "smoking gun" in a friend's home. However, I believe there might be understandable confusion about the definition of probable cause. If an individual has photographs of a crime, those photographs are evidence of the crime, whether the person who is in possession of the evidence is the suspect, the suspect's girlfriend or a curious onlooker.

The State News editorial suggests that the prosecutor's office pledge not to search the computer hard drives of any MSU students when we have probable cause to believe the computers contain evidence of felony crimes. This is an invitation I will decline.

The experience of law enforcement unquestionably shows that computers are the repository of evidence in crimes such as the maintenance of drug records, embezzlements and frauds, and computers are the means of committing crimes such as the dissemination of child pornography.

The editorial further states that, with respect to this office's attempt to secure evidence after the March 27-28, 1999 riot, that the Michigan Supreme Court, in denying the investigative subpoena, stated "news providers are not an extension of the government." This is incorrect. (See Michigan v. Pastor.)

There is no doubt that law enforcement was entitled to the requested materials from the 1999 riot, only that the means used, the then-new and untested investigative subpoena, was not appropriate. In the 1972 Branzburg v. Hayes, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote "the obligation of newsmen