Here's a question I had posed to me recently:
Defendant is in county jail, awaiting trial on several sex assaults of children. One of the victims is his daughter. During a jail visit, Defendant was given some nice new pictures of daughter. (Not pornography, just regular pictures.) We, obviously, think that it's inappropriate to have pictures of one of his sexual assault victims with him in his cell. Sheriff thinks he can't take the pictures out of the cell without a court order.

My opinion is that the defendant has no right to privacy in his cell and the sheriff has the right to seize anything he deems contraband. A picture of his victim seems like contraband to me. I don't see any problem in seizing it. Any thoughts?

It sure is easier to get a third party to successfully retalitate against a witness if you can give the p.o.s. a picture to help him identify his target!

Soria v. State, 933 S.W.2d 46, 60(Tex. Crim. App. 1996) ("Prison officials must be free to seize from cells any articles which, in their view, disserve legitimate institutional interests.") quoting Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. at 528 n. 8, 104 S.Ct. at 3201 n.8.

Defendant has no right to privacy in a jail cell. Other than legal related materials, Sheriff has control over that cell.

We had a defendant who put pictures of his victim (an infant) on jail cell wall. We took note of those pictures and used their existence and location to corroborate defendant's confession to sexually assaulting the infant. The court of appeals took special note of the photos in finding the evidence sufficient.

The photos were seized as evidence. So, you might be thinking of the photos in the wrong way. Seems to me you have punishment evidence to seize.