United States v. Evans, No. 14-3112 (8th Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CaseIn 2012, Agent Smith with the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigations investigated computer IP addresses in North Dakota that were suspected of downloading child pornography. The IP addresses were traced back to Evans. Smith contacted Homeland Security and obtained and executed a search warrant for Evans’s Fargo apartment. During Smith’s forensic examination of Evans’s computers, hard drives, and DVDs, he found more than 23,000 images and 1,300 video files depicting child pornography. Evans was convicted on 14 counts of possession of child pornography, 18 U.S.C. 2252A. The district court sentenced Evans to 120 months’ imprisonment and ordered him to pay $3,250 in restitution to one of the victims depicted in the child pornography in Evans’s possession. The Eighth Circuit affirmed, rejecting challenges to two evidentiary decisions made by the district court during trial and the restitution award. Publication of the images and video clips to the jury was not unfairly prejudicial. With respect to the element of “knowing” possession, the court stated that a reasonable jury could conclude that such a computer-savvy person would not fail to notice that a virus (or a person other than himself) had caused a download of such a large number of images and videos onto his media devices.
Court Description: Kelly, Author, with Loken and Bye, Circuit Judges] Criminal case - Criminal law. No error in playing a limited number of video clips and showing a limited number of images even though defendant stipulated all of the images contained child pornography as defendant has failed to show the display of the images was unfairly prejudicial; while the district court erred in concluding defendant opened the door to admission of stories found on his computer and media which described adult males having sex with children by asserting he did not know the images and the videos were on his computers and media, the error was harmless as the jury never heard the content of the stories, the reference was brief, the matter was not commented on his closing argument and there was other properly-admitted evidence showing defendant knowingly possessed child pornography; some of the images defendant possessed were from the "Vicky" series of child pornography and the district court did not err in awarding her restitution in the amount of $3,250 after considering the Paroline factors, see Paroline v. U.S., 134 S. ct 1710 (2014).
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