Opinion ID: 866199
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: sufficiency of the evidence

Text: A sufficiency-of-the-evidence challenge to a jury's guilty verdict will not succeed unless no rational jury could have concluded that the government proved all of the essential elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt. United States v. Green, 698 F.3d 48, 56 (1st Cir. 2012). As noted above, we evaluate the facts and draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the verdict. Id. We do not weigh evidence or assess credibility. United States v. Tavares, 705 F.3d 4, 18 (1st Cir. 2013). 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(5)(B) creates criminal penalties for any person who knowingly possesses, or knowingly accesses with intent to view, any . . . computer disk, or any other material that contains an image of child pornography that was produced or transported in interstate commerce, including via computer. Here, it is undisputed that the images found on the laptop constituted child pornography and that the interstate commerce element was satisfied. Rogers's challenge focuses instead on the question of knowing possession. To satisfy the statute's knowing-possession requirement, the government must show that Rogers possessed, and knew he possessed, child pornography. See United States v. -7- X-Citement Video, Inc., 513 U.S. 64, 78 (1994); United States v. Hilton, 167 F.3d 61, 75 (1st Cir. 1999), disapproved of on other grounds by Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coal., 535 U.S. 234 (2002). To begin with, there can be no serious dispute that the child pornography found on the laptop was downloaded knowingly and deliberately. The web browser's cookies and indexed history indicated that someone had used the browser to make numerous visits to websites related to, or with names indicative of, child pornography, including nymphets-first-time-sex.com, Natural Lolitas, and innocent-girl.com. See United States v. Pruitt, 638 F.3d 763, 767 (11th Cir. 2011) (conviction was supported by a record of visits to websites with a child-pornography connection); accord United States v. Ramos, 685 F.3d 120, 132 (2d Cir. 2012); United States v. Kain, 589 F.3d 945, 949 (8th Cir. 2009). Further, the discovery of child pornography in the Temporary Internet Files folder suggests that those images were downloaded when a user visited websites hosting them. Cf. Kain, 589 F.3d at 948. And, as the government observes, the fact that a user bookmarked some of these websites supports the conclusion that they were visited deliberately. Cf. United States v. Kornhauser, No. 12-135-CR L, 2013 WL 1197751, at  (2d Cir. Mar. 26, 2013) (summary affirmance); United States v. McNealy, 625 F.3d 858, 870 (5th Cir. 2010). -8- To be sure, we must be cognizant of the prevalence and sophistication of some computer viruses and hackers that can prey upon innocent computer users by placing child pornography on their machines, but the specter of spam, viruses, and hackers must not prevent the conviction of the truly guilty. Pruitt, 638 F.3d at 766-67. Here, Hull's forensic analysis of the computer, which included running the malware infections discovered on the laptop on a test machine for over a week, all but ruled out the possibility that the images had been downloaded by a virus without the user's knowledge. And child pornography (along with a similar pattern of web browsing) was found on the desktop computer seized from Rogers's home, further diminishing the possibility that the presence of the images and videos on the laptop was inadvertent. Lastly, some of the files were found in the laptop's recycle bin, suggesting that someone deliberately attempted to delete them (and thus knew they had been downloaded). See Ramos, 685 F.3d at 132; United States v. Bass, 411 F.3d 1198, 1202 (10th Cir. 2005). On this record, there is no real possibility that this case involved unknowing possession. Cf. Note, Child Pornography, the Internet, and the Challenge of Updating Statutory Terms, 122 Harv. L. Rev. 2206, 2211-14 (2009) (describing ways that a person could unintentionally possess or receive child pornography).3 3 There was also no testimony realistically suggesting that the images could have been downloaded or installed after Rogers sold the laptop to Coastal Trading. The pawn shop's employees and -9- The only remaining question is whether the government proved that the person who knowingly possessed the images and videos was Rogers himself. We think it did. The user account Mingan, which was the only user-created account on the laptop, was strongly associated with Rogers, and child pornography videos were found in the shared folder associated with that user account. The password hint for the Mingan account was My baby and the password itself was Rogers's wife's name (Heather). Rogers himself provided this password to Coastal Trading when he sold the laptop, and has not pointed to evidence suggesting that anyone else knew it. Further, Detective Moir discovered a Myspace profile named Mingan, one of whose Myspace friends was Heather Rogers. The Myspace profile appeared to share login information with a Yahoo account that the laptop had been used to access: Brian87_2006. Brian, of course, is Rogers's name, and he was born in 1987. See United States v. Boll, 635 F.3d 340, 341 (8th Cir. 2011) (the fact that a computer was registered to Terry, the defendant's first name, supported the conclusion that he knowingly possessed child pornography found on it); United States v. Koch, 625 F.3d 470, 478 (8th Cir. 2010) (conviction was supported by the fact that user all the law enforcement personnel who handled the laptop testified that the computer was not altered in any way after Rogers left it at the store. Further, the laptop's operating system indicated that the child pornography files had been created well before Rogers sold the computer to Coastal Trading (although, as Rogers points out, such information is not impervious to manipulation). -10- names on both the computer and flash drive [on which child pornography were found] were variations on [the defendant's] first name). The web browser's cookies showed access to the same Yahoo account, along with visits to the disturbingly named websites discussed above. The web browser also included a bookmark for the U.S. Navy's website; Rogers was a member of the Navy at the time of his arrest.4 In light of all this evidence, and the reasonable inferences that can be drawn from it, we think the jury's decision to convict was wholly rational. The evidence amply established that Rogers possessed and used the laptop, and supported the reasonable inference that he was the one who searched for and knowingly downloaded the child pornography. Rogers's suggestions that someone else somehow downloaded or placed the images and videos on the laptop are simply not supported by any evidence adduced at trial. Hull's testimony all but extinguished the possibility that a virus put the images and videos there, and there 4 Less forceful is the government's suggestion that Rogers must have been the laptop's user because it contained computer games with pugilistic names like Dungeons and Dragons and World of Warcraft, which the government says are not games that might appeal to a female, i.e., Heather Rogers. As best we can tell, this argument is simply based on outmoded assumptions about what sort of entertainment appeals to women. See Nick Breckon, Nielsen Estimates 400,000+ Female World of Warcraft Players in US, Shack News (Apr. 8, 2009 2:27 p.m.), http://www.shacknews.com/ article/58076/nielsen-estimates-400000-female-world (last visited Apr. 25, 2013) (reporting that a Nielsen Company survey found 428,621 female World of Warcraft players in the United States). -11- was no suggestion that a third party could have done it after Rogers sold the laptop. Nor was there any testimony that, before the computer's sale, anyone other than Brian and Heather Rogers had access to it (assuming that she even knew the password, which is certainly possible but is not established by any evidence in the record). Thus constrained, Rogers is forced to posit that his nowex-wife was responsible for the child pornography found on the laptop, but that assertion finds essentially no support in the record, and the jury was entitled to dismiss it. Consequently, we reject Rogers's challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence supporting his conviction. Cf. United States v. Salva-Morales, 660