Oregon Supreme Court overturns JonBenét Ramsey photographer conviction

The Oregon Supreme Court has overturned the conviction of a Lane County man who once photographed child beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey and was convicted in 2021 on several child pornography charges.

Randall DeWitt Simons, 73, of Oakridge, was charged in 2019 with 15 counts of first-degree encouraging child sex abuse. He was later convicted on every count and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Simons was first arrested after authorities began investigating a report from a restaurant in Oakridge that someone had been using the restaurant’s Wi-Fi to download inappropriate and concerning images.

Law enforcement officers directed the business to track, log, and report all of the user’s internet activity to the investigating officer for more than a year, without a warrant.

Police tracked the computer’s IP address from the restaurant’s Wi-Fi system, which led officers to a man who lived near the restaurant and had given Simons a computer, according to a probable cause affidavit filed in Lane County Circuit Court. Investigators obtained a warrant to search the laptop in Simon’s home, relying on information they had collected over time. He was subsequently arrested.

On March 26, the court ruled warrantless internet surveillance on public Wi-Fi violates privacy.

In an opinion written by Justice Bronson D. James, the court held that the Oregon Constitution recognizes people have a right to privacy in their internet browsing activities and the right is not extinguished when they use a publicly accessible wireless network. It’s even true in cases where that access is conditioned on a person accepting a terms-of-service agreement that says a provider may monitor activity and cooperate with law enforcement, James wrote.

During criminal proceedings in the Lane County Circuit Court, Simons moved to controvert the warrant and suppress the evidence obtained by police, arguing the business was a “state actor for purposes of Article I, section 9, and that its year-long warrantless surveillance was an unconstitutional, warrantless search attributable to the state,” the Supreme Court opinion said.

The Circuit Court denied Simon’s motion. The Oregon Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s decision in part and stated Simons had no cognizable privacy interest in his internet activities performed on a third-party network.

The Oregon Supreme Court rejected the state’s argument.

“The mere fact that a person accesses the internet through a public network does not eliminate their Article I, section 9, right to privacy in their online activities,” according to James. “Even when access is expressly conditioned on a user’s acceptance of terms-of-service provisions purporting to alert the user that the provider may monitor activity and cooperate with law enforcement.”

Justice K. Bushong suggested in a partial dissent the Court should reconsider its approach in a future case to what constitutes a “search” under the Oregon Constitution. The court’s decision reverses the Court of Appeals and sends the case back to the Lane County Circuit Court for further proceedings.

Simons has maintained his innocence since he was arrested in 2019.

Simons had been a photographer for 6-year-old Colorado beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey a few months before her still-unsolved 1996 murder, the Associated Press reported in 1998.

In October 1998, Simons was arrested on a charge of indecent exposure in Lincoln County, Colorado. According to the book “Perfect Murder, Perfect Town” by Lawrence Schiller, Simons was arrested in 1998 for allegedly walking nude down a residential street in the small town of Genoa, Colorado. Simons allegedly offered to the arresting deputy unprovoked, “I didn’t kill JonBenét.” 

Haleigh Kochanski is a breaking news and public safety reporter for The Register-Guard. You may reach her at HKochanski@gannett.com.