United States v. Hardrick, Jr., No. 13-50195 (9th Cir. 2014)
Annotate this CaseDefendant appealed his conviction for two counts of knowingly receiving visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. The court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting evidence of the uncharged child pornography videos found on defendant's computers where the probative value of the Rule 404(b) evidence outweighed the danger of unfair prejudice to defendant; the district court did not err by giving an insufficient limiting instruction on the evidence or by failing to give another limiting instruction sua sponte when the evidence was admitted; and there was sufficient evidence to sustain defendant's convictions. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court.
Court Description: Criminal Law. The panel affirmed a conviction on two counts of knowingly receiving visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(2). The panel held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in determining that the probative value of uncharged-video evidence admitted under Fed. R. Evid. 404(b) outweighed the danger of unfair prejudice. The panel rejected the defendant’s argument that a limiting instruction at the close of the evidence was insufficient and that the district court should have given a contemporaneous limiting instruction sua sponte. The panel held that the circumstantial evidence of the defendant’s knowledge was sufficient to support the verdict, even though there was no direct evidence that he had downloaded or watched the files, where the government produced evidence that the defendant had dominion and control over the two computers on which the child pornography videos were found; and where the number, timing, and location of the videos were inconsistent with the defendant’s defenses that he had accidentally downloaded the videos or that a hacker had downloaded them to his computer without his knowledge. Judge Reinhardt concurred. He wrote that he does not profess to know the solution to the problem of how to cure the illness that causes otherwise law-abiding people to engage in the viewing of child pornography, but that lengthy sentences such as the ten-year sentence in this case for a first offense, cannot be the answer. Judge Noonan concurred. He wrote to underline the need for further action to discourage a crime that is typically committed by persons with no criminal record and increasingly prosecuted as a serious federal offense. He asked why the government shouldn’t advertise the law and its penalty.
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