NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION

File Name: 20a0150n.06

No. 19-5686

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

DENNIS AMMONS,

Defendant-Appellant.

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ON APPEAL FROM THE 

UNITED STATES DISTRICT 

COURT FOR THE WESTERN 

DISTRICT OF KENTUCKY

Before: MERRITT, THAPAR, and LARSEN, Circuit Judges.

LARSEN, Circuit Judge. A jury convicted Dennis Ammons of knowingly accessing child 

pornography with intent to view it. The district court sentenced him to 110 months in prison. On 

appeal, Ammons challenges both his conviction and his sentence. We AFFIRM.

I. 

In 2014, the FBI began investigating a website known as “Playpen.” Playpen was an online 

forum that advertised and distributed child pornography. Once logged in, users could view an 

extensive collection of pictures and videos containing child pornography. 

Playpen was not accessible through traditional internet browsers. Instead, the site could 

only be accessed through what is colloquially referred to as the “dark web.” See United States v. 

Tagg, 886 F.3d 579, 582 (6th Cir. 2018). Users had to download special software known as “The 

Onion Router” or “Tor,” which allowed them to anonymously access a network of hidden 

websites. Through the Tor software, users then had to input an intricate web address consisting of 

random, algorithm-generated characters to reach Playpen’s site. This web address was not linked 
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to traditional search engines like Google; it had to be obtained through other means, such as direct 

communication with pre-existing users. 

With help from a foreign government, the FBI located a server containing a copy of 

Playpen’s website. In January of 2015, agents obtained a search warrant and seized a copy of that 

server. Agents then identified and apprehended Playpen’s administrator the following month. At 

that point, the FBI assumed control over Playpen. But even having control did not allow the FBI

to identify the website’s users; the Tor software masked their IP addresses. 

The government sought a warrant from a magistrate judge in the Eastern District of 

Virginia—where the FBI had transported Playpen’s server—to deploy what is known as a 

“Network Investigative Technique” (NIT). An NIT is a form of “government-created malware.” 

United States v. Werdene, 883 F.3d 204, 206 (3d Cir. 2018). It unmasks a user’s IP address by 

embedding instructions within the website’s code that force the user’s computer to transmit its IP 

address to a government-controlled server. The magistrate judge issued the warrant on February 

20, 2015 (the Virginia Warrant). 

Using the NIT, the government obtained an IP address associated with the username 

“H8RL3Y.” This user had accessed several child-pornography images on Playpen over a six-hour 

period in early March 2015. The user had also responded to a post titled “Pthc 14Y Lil Zinaida 

13Y Boy (51.15),” asking “What’s the password?” The post contained a link to an external website 

where visitors could download child pornography. 

The FBI ultimately traced H8RL3Y’s IP address to a home in Muldraugh, Kentucky, where 

Ammons lived with his sister and her two minor children. The government sought and obtained a 

warrant to physically search Ammons’ residence for evidence of child pornography (the Kentucky 

Warrant). The application for the Kentucky Warrant relied on the information obtained through 
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the NIT to establish probable cause. The subsequent search and seizure of Ammons’ computer

revealed 220 child-pornography images (113 non-duplicates) stored in the cache of his Chrome 

web-browser. The metadata attached to these images indicated that they had been accessed on 

October 22, 2015. 

Following the search, the FBI interviewed Ammons. He waived his Miranda rights and 

agreed to answer the agents’ questions. Ammons told the agents that he was the primary user of 

the computer in his household. He also explained that he had installed a password protected 

wireless router in the house a few months earlier. Finally, after initially denying ever seeing child 

pornography, Ammons admitted that he came across child pornography while exploring the “dark 

web.” He named multiple sites where he had seen child pornography and described the images to 

the agents—though he claimed he was not a “collector” of these images. 

The FBI also interviewed Ammons’ 16-year-old niece, who lived in his Kentucky home. 

She told agents that Ammons had previously taken nude photographs of her. She described an 

incident in which Ammons had caught her taking nude pictures of herself. She stated that Ammons 

confronted her, confiscated the phone on which she had taken the pictures, and threatened to tell 

her mother unless she agreed to pose nude for Ammons. She claimed that Ammons then took 

nude photographs of her, forcing her to pose with her legs spread apart exposing her genitals. 

These photographs were never found. 

A grand jury indicted Ammons on two counts: (1) production of child pornography, in 

violation 18 U.S.C. § 2251(a) and (e); and (2) knowingly accessing child pornography with intent 

to view it, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(5)(B). Prior to trial, Ammons moved to suppress

the evidence obtained from his computer through both the NIT and the physical search of his home. 

He argued that the Virginia Warrant was invalid because the issuing magistrate judge lacked 
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jurisdiction over Kentucky, where Ammons’ computer was located when the government 

implemented the NIT. Because the subsequent Kentucky Warrant was obtained with information 

from the NIT, Ammons contended that evidence from both searches must be suppressed. The 

district court denied Ammons’ motion, and the case proceeded to trial. 

After trial, the jury rendered a split verdict, acquitting Ammons of producing child 

pornography but convicting him of knowingly accessing child pornography with intent to view it. 

Ammons moved for a judgment of acquittal, arguing that the evidence was insufficient to support 

his conviction. The district court denied his motion. 

Ammons’ conviction carried a maximum prison sentence of ten years. See 18 U.S.C. 

§ 2252A(b)(2). At sentencing, the district court concluded that the appropriate Guidelines range 

was 108 to 120 months. Ammons argued that his Guidelines range was unreasonable. 

Specifically, he contended that the enhancements contained in U.S.S.G. § 2G2.2 resulted in nearly 

all child-pornography offenders receiving the maximum sentence; as a result, Ammons argued, 

the court should ignore those enhancements and issue a below-Guidelines sentence. The district 

court disagreed, sentencing Ammons to 110 months in prison—10 months shy of the statutory 

maximum. Ammons appealed.

II.

A.

Ammons argues first that the district court erred by denying his motion to suppress. 

Evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment may be subject to suppression at trial. 

See United States v. Fisher, 745 F.3d 200, 203 (6th Cir. 2014). But not all Fourth Amendment 

violations result in suppression. Id. The exclusionary rule’s “sole purpose” is to deter Fourth 

Amendment violations. See Davis v. United States, 564 U.S. 229, 236 (2011). Thus, when officers 
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“conduct a search in objectively reasonable reliance on a warrant later held invalid,” the 

exclusionary rule does not apply. Id. at 238–39 (quotation marks omitted). This is known as the 

“good-faith exception” to the exclusionary rule. Fisher, 745 F.3d at 203.

The district court denied Ammons’ suppression motion because it concluded that the goodfaith exception applied. Ammons challenges that conclusion on appeal. He argues that the goodfaith exception is categorically inapplicable to warrants that are void ab initio for lack of 

jurisdiction.1 And, even if the good-faith exception could apply, he argues that the agents’ reliance 

on the Virginia Warrant was objectively unreasonable. 

The Virginia Warrant “has implicated more than a hundred defendants across the United 

States,” United States v. Horton, 863 F.3d 1041, 1045–46 (8th Cir. 2017) (collecting cases), so it 

is perhaps unsurprising that this is not our first encounter with a suppression claim like Ammons’. 

Indeed, in United States v. Moorehead, 912 F.3d 963, 967 (6th Cir. 2019), we rejected the same 

objections to good-faith reliance on the Virginia Warrant that Ammons raises here. See id. at 968, 

970. Moorehead, therefore, forecloses both of Ammons’ arguments. In his reply brief, Ammons 

asks us to disregard Moorehead and rely instead on our earlier decision in United States v. Scott, 

which held that the good-faith exception does not apply “whe[n] a warrant is issued by a person 

lacking the requisite legal authority.” 260 F.3d 512, 515 (6th Cir. 2001). But Moorehead rejected 

that argument as well. See 912 F.3d at 969 (recognizing that Scott’s holding had been modified 

1 Ammons’ argument that the Virginia Warrant is void ab initio for lack of jurisdiction is based, 

in part, on the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure as they existed at the time of the search. 

Because we conclude that the good-faith exception applies, we need not decide whether the 

warrant was invalid. We note, however, that the Rules were later amended to expressly authorize 

warrants like the Virginia Warrant. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 41(b)(6) (“[A] magistrate judge having 

authority in any district where activities related to a crime may have occurred has authority to issue 

a warrant to use remote access to search electronic storage media and to seize or copy electronically 

stored information located within or outside that district . . . .”).
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by our decision in United States v. Master, 614 F.3d 236, 242–43 (6th Cir. 2010), due to 

intervening Supreme Court precedent). Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s denial of 

Ammons’ suppression motion.

B.

Ammons’ sentencing challenge is likewise foreclosed by our precedent. He argues that the 

enhancements outlined in U.S.S.G. § 2G2.2 are so broadly applicable in child-pornography cases 

that a sentence premised on those enhancements is substantively unreasonable. He concedes, 

however, that this argument is directly foreclosed by our decision in United States v. Lynde, 926 

F.3d 275 (6th Cir. 2019); he nonetheless wishes to preserve this argument for further review. 

Ammons is right that Lynde controls and forecloses his claim to sentencing relief here. See 926 

F.3d at 279–80.

C. 

Finally, Ammons argues that the district court erred in denying his motion for acquittal 

because the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable 

doubt. This is a question of law that we review de novo. United States v. Graham, 622 F.3d 445, 

448 (6th Cir. 2010). A defendant claiming evidence insufficiency must meet “a very heavy 

burden.” United States v. Abboud, 438 F.3d 554, 589 (6th Cir. 2006) (quoting United States v. 

Vannerson, 786 F.2d 221, 225 (6th Cir. 1986)). We view all evidence “in [the] light most favorable 

to the prosecution, giving the prosecution the benefit of all reasonable inferences from the 

testimony.” United States v. McAuliffe, 490 F.3d 526, 537 (6th Cir. 2007). And we may disturb 
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the jury’s verdict only if no “rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the 

crime beyond a reasonable doubt.” Id.

Section 2252A(a)(5)(B) forbids “[a]ny person” to “knowingly access[] with intent to 

view[] any . . . material that contains an image of child pornography.” Thus, to convict Ammons, 

the prosecution had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Ammons (1) knowingly accessed with 

intent to view, (2) any material, (3) that he knew contained an image of child pornography. See 

United States v. Brune, 767 F.3d 1009, 1020 (10th Cir. 2014). 

Ammons attempts to refute the first element. He points to the fact that the images

containing child pornography were found in his web browser’s cache. Cache is a storage drive 

used by web browsers, like Google Chrome, to locally save web pages visited by a user. By storing

this information, cache allows web browsers to more quickly load web content. Importantly, 

though, not all content stored in cache has necessarily been seen by the user. For example, when 

a page on a website requires users to scroll down to see more content, all of the page’s content is 

stored in cache even if the user never scrolls to the bottom of the page. Additionally, material 

from external websites linked to the website being viewed may be stored in cache in anticipation 

that the user might click on the link. Because it is technically possible that the 220 images of child 

pornography found in Ammons’ cache were stored without him viewing the material, Ammons 

contends that no rational juror could have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. 

We disagree. First, Ammons’ argument relies on a false premise. A conviction under 

§ 2252A(a)(5)(B) does not require the defendant to have actually viewed the illegal images. See 

Tagg, 886 F.3d at 587. “The access-with-intent offense is complete the moment that the elements 

of access and intent coincide.” Id. Thus, the jury could have convicted Ammons if it found that 

he knowingly accessed a child-pornography website with intent to view illicit images, but stopped 
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short of actually viewing the images. Id. (“[E]ven if the person never viewed illegal child 

pornography, knowingly accessing a child-pornography website with the intent to view illegal 

materials is itself a criminal act.”).

Second, the government presented ample evidence at trial from which a rational juror could 

find Ammons guilty—even under Ammons’ own theory of § 2252A(a)(5)(B). Agents Brian Coyt 

and Virginia MacHenry, who interviewed Ammons after the search, testified that Ammons 

admitted to viewing child pornography while browsing the internet. More specifically, the agents 

said that Ammons admitted to installing the Tor software on his browser and encountering child 

pornography on the dark web. The agents then explained that these websites on the dark web 

could not be accessed through a traditional Google search, but instead had to be intentionally 

sought out using the Tor software. Finally, Agent MacHenry testified that Ammons had admitted 

to browsing forums on the traditional internet, such as 4chan, which “told him certain locations on 

TOR to look for child pornography.” R. 125, PageID 866. While Ammons testified that the agents 

were misrepresenting his statements during the interview, the jury was not required to credit his 

testimony.

The prosecution also presented the testimony of Agent Amanda Rankhorn, the forensic 

specialist who analyzed Ammons’ hard drive. Agent Rankhorn testified that, at 8:08 AM on 

October 22, 2015, Ammons had entered a Google search for the term “jblover.” Rankhorn then 

testified that the browser cache indicated that Ammons had visited the website “jblover.org,” 

which included forums titled, “Jailbait forum – Stickam Captures – Omegle Captures.” And she 

explained that many of the 220 images of child pornography found in Ammons’ cache contained 

a logo for “omegle.com,” a video-chatting website. Finally, Rankhorn testified that most of the 

images showed young girls with their legs spread apart exposing their genitals—which matched
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testimony provided by Ammons’ niece, who told the jury that Ammons had forced her to pose in 

the identical position. A sealed exhibit submitted to the jury contained a sample of 10 of the 220 

images found on Ammons’ hard drive. Taking this evidence in the light most favorable to the 

prosecution, a “rational trier of fact” certainly could have found Ammons guilty beyond a 

reasonable doubt. See Graham, 622 F.3d at 448.

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For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.