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Parties Involved:
Bill Daniel Combs
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION

File Name: 24a0495n.06

No. 24-5111

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

BILL DANIEL COMBS,

Defendant-Appellant.

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ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED 

STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR 

THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF 

KENTUCKY 

OPINION

Before: SUTTON, Chief Judge; MURPHY and BLOOMEKATZ, Circuit Judges.

MURPHY, Circuit Judge. Bill Combs persuaded a young girl to send him sexually explicit 

photos of herself. He later pleaded guilty to unlawfully producing child pornography. When

calculating Combs’s guidelines range, the district court relied on evidence that he had also sexually 

abused his victim. On appeal, Combs claims that this evidence did not permit the court to impose

two sentencing enhancements. But the court properly applied one of the enhancements, and the 

other one did not affect his guidelines range. We thus affirm the court’s 360-month sentence.

In February 2021, the Kentucky State Police started to investigate Combs over his 

relationship with a 14-year-old girl in Pikeville, Kentucky. As part of the investigation, Facebook 

produced the messages that Combs had exchanged with this young girl on Facebook Messenger 

from late January into early February. These messages referred to sexual acts that Combs had 

previously engaged in with her. The messages also showed Combs soliciting her to take sexually 

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explicit pictures of herself and to share those pictures with him. She sent him two of these explicit

photos on February 10. During an interview the next month, the victim acknowledged Combs’s 

past sexual abuse and explained that they had engaged in the prior sex acts when living in the same 

house a year or so in the past.

Combs pleaded guilty to one count of producing child pornography in violation of 18 

U.S.C. § 2251(a). The district court calculated his guidelines sentence as life imprisonment. This 

conclusion rested in part on the court’s factual finding that Combs had sexually abused the victim 

before he had solicited her to send him the two sexually explicit pictures. The court made that 

finding based mainly on Combs’s text messages with the victim. Despite this life-sentence 

guidelines calculation, Combs’s crime had a statutory maximum of 30 years’ imprisonment. See 

18 U.S.C. § 2251(e). So that term of years became Combs’s guidelines sentence. The court 

imposed this 30-year term of imprisonment.

Combs appealed. He now argues that the district court wrongly relied on two sentencing

enhancements to calculate his guidelines range. The court first imposed a five-level enhancement 

on the ground that Combs had engaged in a pattern of prohibited sexual conduct with the victim.

See U.S.S.G. § 4B1.5(b)(1). It next imposed a two-level enhancement on the ground that his crime 

involved a sexual act with her. Id. § 2G2.1(b)(2)(A). We will consider each enhancement in turn.

Section 4B1.5(b)(1): Pattern of Prohibited Sexual Conduct. Section 4B1.5 increases the 

punishment for defendants who commit repeated sex crimes against minors. As relevant now, this 

guideline requires district courts to impose a five-level enhancement “[i]n any case in which the 

defendant’s instant offense of conviction is a covered sex crime, neither § 4B1.1 nor subsection (a) 

of this guideline applies, and the defendant engaged in a pattern of activity involving prohibited 

sexual conduct[.]” Id. § 4B1.5(b). The parties do not dispute that two of these three elements 

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apply here. They do not dispute that Combs’s conviction for producing child pornography 

qualifies as a “covered sex crime.” See id. § 4B1.5 n.2(A)(ii). They also do not dispute that Combs 

did not qualify as a career offender under § 4B1.1 or have a prior “sex offense conviction” under 

§ 4B1.5(a). Their dispute instead turns only on whether Combs “engaged in a pattern of activity 

involving prohibited sexual conduct” with the victim. Id. § 4B1.5(b).

Even on this final element, the parties disagree only on a narrow issue. Combs accepts that 

a pattern of prohibited sexual conduct can exist under § 4B1.5 if “the defendant engaged in 

prohibited sexual conduct with a minor” “on at least two separate occasions[.]” Id. § 4B1.5 

n.4(B)(i). Combs also accepts that a defendant’s current conviction can count toward this total. 

Id. § 4B1.5 n.4(B)(ii); see United States v. Wandahsega, 924 F.3d 868, 886 (6th Cir. 2019). And 

he accepts that a defendant’s prior uncharged crimes can count toward it too. U.S.S.G. § 4B1.5 

n.4(B)(ii); see United States v. Corp, 668 F.3d 379, 391–92 (6th Cir. 2012). Combs lastly does 

not dispute that his current child-pornography conviction and his prior sexual acts with the victim 

both qualify as “prohibited sexual conduct” under § 4B1.5(b)(1). See U.S.S.G. § 4B1.5 cmt. 

n.4(A).

So what does Combs dispute? He offers two reasons why we may not rely on his prior 

sexual abuse as one of the two required “occasions” of prohibited sexual conduct. Id. § 4B1.5 

n.4(B)(i). Combs first asserts that the prior sexual abuse does not qualify as “relevant conduct” 

for his current conviction because he did not engage in the abuse “during the commission of” his 

child-pornography offense, “in preparation for that offense, or in the course of attempting to avoid 

detection or responsibility for” it. Id. § 1B1.3(a)(1). But a defendant’s prior misconduct generally 

must fall within this “relevant conduct” definition only if a district court seeks to use that prior 

misconduct to determine the defendant’s “base offense level,” any “specific offense 

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characteristics,” any “cross references in Chapter Two” of the Sentencing Guidelines, or any 

“adjustments in Chapter Three[.]” Id. § 1B1.3(a). A defendant’s prior crimes, by contrast, need 

not fall within this relevant-conduct definition when the district court applies the career-offender 

provisions in Chapter Four (including § 4B1.5). See id. § 1B1.3(a)–(b); United States v. Preece, 

2023 WL 395028, at *5–7 (6th Cir. Jan. 25, 2023). Combs’s past abuse thus did not need to qualify 

as “relevant conduct” for the district court to consider it under § 4B1.5(b)(1).

Combs next argues that the district court did not, in fact, rely on his prior sexual abuse for 

this enhancement. He argues that the court instead found that the two explicit photos were created 

on two separate “occasions” and thus that the photos alone sufficed to apply the enhancement. 

Combs adds that the court erred in this regard because the victim created the two photos at the 

same time. Cf. Wooden v. United States, 595 U.S. 360, 366–76 (2022). But we need not decide 

whether the production of the two photos occurred on separate occasions because Combs is wrong

to suggest that the court did not rely on his prior sexual abuse. Admittedly, the court said that the 

“activity here” established a pattern of prohibited sexual conduct without identifying any specific

incidents. Sent. Tr., R.71, PageID 329. But the court adopted the “findings” in Combs’s 

presentence report. Id., PageID 330. That report found that Combs’s prior abuse qualified as 

prohibited sexual conduct under § 4B1.5(b)(1). By incorporating the report’s findings, the court 

incorporated this logic. And since the creation of the photos and the prior abuse occurred at 

different times, Combs engaged in prohibited sexual conduct on the two occasions required to 

trigger § 4B1.5(b)(1).

Section 2G2.1(b)(2)(A): Sexual Act or Contact. Section 2G2.1(b)(2)(A) increases a 

defendant’s offense level by two if the “offense involved” “the commission of a sexual act or 

sexual contact.” U.S.S.G. § 2G2.1(b)(2)(A). The parties agree that the “relevant conduct” 

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definition does apply to this enhancement. See id. § 1B1.3(a). But the district court found that 

Combs’s prior sex acts with the victim qualified as relevant conduct for his later efforts to get her 

to create explicit photos. It reasoned that the prior acts qualified as “grooming” behavior designed 

to get her to produce the photos. Sent. Tr., R.71, PageID 326. The court thus found that Combs 

had engaged in the prior abuse “in preparation for” his current child-pornography offense. 

U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3(a)(1).

We need not address this theory’s validity. Even if the court wrongly imposed this 

enhancement, it would not have changed Combs’s guidelines sentence. We have often held (as a 

common-sense matter) that a district court’s errors in calculating a defendant’s guidelines range 

did not harm the defendant when those errors did not affect the defendant’s ultimate guidelines 

range (or when they produced a lower range than the defendant should have received). See United 

States v. Faulkner, 926 F.3d 266, 275 (6th Cir. 2019); United States v. Aguilar-Andres, 780 

F. App’x 231, 234 (6th Cir. 2019); United States v. Bivens, 811 F.3d 840, 843 (6th Cir. 2016); see 

also United States v. Bell, 661 F. App’x 318, 325 (6th Cir. 2016).

This principle applies here. The district court calculated Combs’s total offense level as 46. 

Without this two-level enhancement, his total offense level would have declined to 44. Yet this

number still would have exceeded the highest possible offense level under the guidelines: 43. The 

district court thus still would have reduced Combs’s total offense level to 43. See U.S.S.G. ch. 5, 

pt. A (Sentencing Table) cmt. n.2. And his guidelines sentence would have remained his statutory 

maximum: 360 months’ imprisonment. Because this two-level enhancement did not affect 

Combs’s proper guidelines sentence, any (assumed) error in applying the enhancement was 

harmless. See Faulkner, 926 F.3d at 275.

We affirm.

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