Opinion ID: 1036619
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: sufficiency of the evidence

Text: Lastly, Shoemaker requests that we expand the certificate of appealability to consider the issue whether his convictions were based on insufficient evidence and thus a violation of the Due Process Clause. A conviction based on insufficient evidence violates a defendant’s due process rights. In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358 (1970). Evidence is insufficient if, viewed in the light most favorable to the prosecution, no reasonable trier of fact could have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 (1979). The standard for expanding a certificate of appealability is low. A certificate of appealability should issue if “reasonable jurists could debate whether” (1) the district court’s assessment of the claim was debatable or wrong; or (2) the issue presented is “adequate to deserve encouragement to proceed further.” Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473, 484 (2000) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted); see also Miller-El v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. 322, 338 (2003). Even if the standard to expand the certificate of appealability is met, Shoemaker cannot meet his burden to show that the state court was unreasonable to decide that sufficient evidence existed to support his convictions. First, the state court was not unreasonable when it rejected Shoemaker’s claim that insufficient evidence existed to support his conviction for knowingly possessing or SHOEMAKER V. TAYLOR 25 controlling child pornography. Shoemaker owned the Beachbaby and Blowout websites; the servers for these websites were located in his business office; two of the images were in a folder titled “shoe,” which are the first four letters of Shoemaker’s last name; the “shoe” folder also contained images of Shoemaker, his friends, and his residence; and the systems operator for Beachbaby was Shoemaker’s sole employee. In light of this evidence, the state court did not unreasonably apply Jackson v. Virginia in rejecting Shoemaker’s habeas claim that insufficient evidence existed to support his convictions for possession of child pornography. Nor was the state court objectively unreasonable to reject Shoemaker’s claim that insufficient evidence existed to support his conviction for duplicating child pornography (based on Exhibits 13 and 14). The copies of these images were located in a folder on the Blowout server titled “shoe”; the “shoe” folder also contained images of Shoemaker, his friends, and his residence; the user “Staff” was moving Shoemaker’s personal images around on the same day the copy of the “shoe” folder appeared on the Blowout server; and Shoemaker was the systems operator for the Blowout server. Given this evidence, the state court did not unreasonably apply Jackson v. Virginia in rejecting Shoemaker’s claim that insufficient evidence existed to support his conviction for duplicating child pornography.