Opinion ID: 2709330
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Motion for New Trial and Sentencing

Text: Eads filed a pro se motion for a new trial, and again, de‐ clined the court’s offer to appoint him counsel. The court held an evidentiary hearing on his motion and Eads called several witnesses. Rachel presented a new story that Nathan Asbury had lived with her and Eads in the past, and that during Asbury’s stay, she had seen him on the living room computer viewing child pornography. She further claimed that she and Eads were out of town on October 26, 2011 (the day Detective Odier downloaded the child pornography), and that Asbury was there to watch their dog. Rachel said that she lied in her initial statements to police officers be‐ cause they threatened to take her children away. As a result, the government introduced several statements from Rachel’s 8 No. 12‐2466 interview with detectives as impeachment evidence, includ‐ ing her statements that: (1) no one was able to use the com‐ puter in the living room except for Eads; (2) Eads looked at child pornography in order to turn it over to the FBI for his job; and (3) Rachel did not have the password to the com‐ puter. Asbury also testified. He denied being at Eads’s home on the days when detectives tracked pornography uploads and denied having ever looked at child pornography on Eads’s computer. In fact, Asbury was incarcerated between June 14 and August 23, 2011—a time period in which there was a significant amount of user activity on the living room laptop, some of which involved downloading and viewing child pornography. The district court therefore rejected Eads’s assertion that he had any newly discovered evidence to offer and denied the motion for a new trial. The case proceeded to sentencing. Eads made several un‐ successful objections pertaining to the Probation Depart‐ ment’s calculations under the United States Sentencing Guidelines. The district court accepted the Presentence In‐ vestigation Report’s recommended adjusted offense levels of 47 for Counts 1 and 2 (distribution and possession of child pornography), and 41 for Count 5 (witness tampering). Giv‐ en that Eads’s criminal history points put him in criminal history category V, his Guidelines range for imprisonment was life. After a lengthy discussion of the factors under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), the court sentenced him to a term 480 months’ imprisonment. Eads now appeals his conviction and sentence.