Opinion ID: 2935898
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: admission of allegedly prejudicial

Text: IMAGES AND VIDEOS During trial, the government offered eleven images and five videos removed from the hard drive of Bilus’s computer to establish that he had received and possessed child pornography. Even though all five of the videos were admitted into evidence, only five-second clips from two of them were played for the jury. Bilus objected to the admission of that evidence, arguing that its cumulative probative value was substantially outweighed by the risk of unfair prejudice under Federal Rule of Evidence 403. Bilus’s attorney also questioned whether “two or three” of the eleven images offered by the government actually constituted child pornography, but he 17 “The court may exclude relevant evidence if its porbative value is substantially outweighed by a danger of one or more of the following: unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, misleading the jury, undue delay, wasting time, or needlessly presenting cumulative evidence.” Fed. R. Evid. 403. 18 Even if the evidence about Bilus’s arrest was not inextricably intertwined with the evidence supporting his federal charges, it likely would have been admissible under Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), because it was probative of the issues of intent, identity, absence of mistake, lack of accident, and motive. See Fed. R. Evid. 404(b). 16 Case: 14-12269 Date Filed: 09/15/2015 Page: 17 of 50 acknowledged that the other eight or nine were pornographic. ECF No. 153, at 48. The attorney suggested that he would not have objected if only “three or five” of the images had been shown to the jury, due to the government’s need to prove its case for receipt and possession of child pornography, but argued that showing all eleven images and any of the videos constituted prejudicial error. Id. The district court overruled the objections, but did not view the images or videos before doing so. Bilus contends, based upon the Third Circuit’s decision in United States v. Cunningham, 694 F.3d 372 (3d Cir. 2012), that the district court’s admission of the eleven images and two, five-second video clips without first viewing them was an abuse of discretion. 19 The district court in Cunningham allowed the prosecutor to play for the jury a total of two minutes and thirteen seconds of excerpts from seven videos that had been seized from the defendant’s computer. The videos depicted acts of manual and oral stimulation of male and female genitals, as well as vaginal and anal intercourse, all involving minors. Two of the videos depicted bondage and violent sexual acts. Id. at 380-82 and n.11. The Third Circuit found that, “speaking generally, a district court should personally examine challenged 19 See Dodds, 347 F.3d at 897 (holding that the district court’s evidentiary rulings are reviewed for an abuse of discretion). 17 Case: 14-12269 Date Filed: 09/15/2015 Page: 18 of 50 evidence before deciding to admit it under Rule 403,” but declined to adopt a bright-line rule requiring such an examination in all cases. Id. at 386-87. Even so, the Third Circuit held that, “under the circumstances of this case, the [district court] abused its discretion by admitting the videos without first viewing them.” Id. at 383 (emphasis and alteration supplied). Because of that abuse of discretion, the district court’s “underlying Rule 403 determination [was] not entitled to the full range of deference that [the Third Circuit] would normally give to it on appeal.” Id. at 388 (alterations supplied). The Cunningham Court went on to hold that the “law of diminishing marginal returns” reduced the probative value of each video clip successively introduced after the requisite elements of the offense had been established. 20 The Third Circuit concluded that the “violent and sadistic character 20 Specifically, the Third Circuit observed that: Even though the two sets of videos were probative, . . . , the law of diminishing marginal returns still operates. The probative value of each clip was reduced by the existence of the clips before it. Once one video excerpt from each of the two videos was shown, the fact being proven — i.e., that the person distributing, receiving, and possessing that pornography would know that it contained images of real minors engaging in sexually explicit activity — may well have been established. As a result, after one excerpt from each video was displayed, the probative value of the remaining excerpts became diminished because knowledge of distribution, receipt, and possession had already been established in some degree by the prior video excerpts. Thus, any of the three excerpts from the first video would have diminished probative value if one or two of the other video excerpts from the first video had already been shown. Likewise, any of the four excerpts from the second video would have diminished probative value if one or two of the other video excerpts from the second video had already been shown. 18 Case: 14-12269 Date Filed: 09/15/2015 Page: 19 of 50 [of the video clips depicting bondage and violence] likely created ‘disgust and antagonism’ toward Cunningham which risked ‘overwhelming prejudice’ toward him.” Id. at 390-91 (quoting United States v. Harvey, 991 F.2d 981, 996 (2d Cir. 1993)) (alteration supplied). For such reasons, the Third Circuit held that the district court’s admission of the bondage clips was an abuse of its discretion and The question in the end, of course, is whether the probative value of the clips shown was substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice or the needless presentation of cumulative evidence. See Fed. R. Evid. 403. As Rule 403 clarifies, a party is not protected from all prejudice — only unfair prejudice. See Fed. R. Evid. 403; see United States v. Bergrin, 682 F.3d 261, 279 (3d Cir. 2012) (“It must always be remembered that unfair prejudice is what Rule 403 is meant to guard against. . . .”). Here, the aggregate risk of unfair prejudice was tremendous. Although the videos in question were not presented to this Court, the detailed descriptions we have received show that at least two of them should clearly have been excluded under Rule 403. Those two video excerpts, part of the second set of video clips, portray bondage or actual violence. Although all of the video excerpts are described as portraying deeply disturbing images, the descriptions of the depraved and violent sexual acts in Excerpt 1 and Excerpt 3 from the second video, . . . let alone the actual video images, are enough to “generate even more intense disgust” and cause us to conclude that the videos themselves surely “outweigh[ ] any probative value they might have” as to the charges of knowingly distributing, receiving, and possessing child pornography. [United States v. ]Curtin, 489 F.3d [935,] 964 [(9th Cir. 2007)] (Kleinfeld, J., concurring); see [United States v.] Loughry, 660 F.3d [965,] 974[ (7th Cir. 2011)] (citing Judge Kleinfeld’s concurrence in Curtin for the proposition that “video excerpts shown to the jury . . . [of] men raping and ejaculating in the genitals of prepubescent girls . . . have a strong tendency to produce intense disgust”). Cunningham, 694 F.3d at 389-90 (last alteration in original, other alterations supplied, footnote omitted). 19 Case: 14-12269 Date Filed: 09/15/2015 Page: 20 of 50 reversed the conviction. Cunningham, 694 F.3d at 392-93. Even so, the Court was careful to note that a district court “is not required to scrub the trial clean of all evidence that may have an emotional impact.” [United States v.] Ganoe, 538 F.3d [1117,] 1124 [(11th Cir. 2008)] (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, we do not hold that the admission here of video excerpts or other images was per se improper. Indeed, courts are in near-uniform agreement that the admission of child pornography images or videos is appropriate, even where the defendant has stipulated, or offered to stipulate, that those images or videos contained child pornography. See, e.g., United States v. Polouizzi, 564 F.3d 142, 153 (2d Cir. 2009); United States v. Schene, 543 F.3d 627, 643 (10th Cir. 2008); Ganoe, 538 F.3d at 1123-24; United States v. Morales-Aldahondo, 524 F.3d 115, 120 (1st Cir. 2008); United States v. Sewell, 457 F.3d 841, 844 (8th Cir. 2006); Dodds, 347 F.3d at 898-99. We also decline to adopt a bright-line rule on the number of video excerpts that can be shown or on the maximum length of time that video excerpts can last. Cunningham, 694 F.3d at 391 (alterations supplied). Of course, Cunningham is only persuasive authority. Moreover, that opinion explicitly declined to establish a bright-line rule that a district court must view all pornography images and/or videos before publishing them to the jury. The decision also is distinguishable. The prosecution in this case played a total of only ten seconds of clips from two of the five videos. There were no duplicate clips from either video, as in Cunningham, and the total length of clips played here was 20 Case: 14-12269 Date Filed: 09/15/2015 Page: 21 of 50 far less than in that case. Finally, none of the video clips shown to the jury in the present case involved acts of bondage or violent sexual acts. Rather than focusing on distinguishable, non-binding authority, it is more helpful to examine Eleventh Circuit precedent. In United States v. AlfaroMoncada, 607 F.3d 720 (11th Cir. 2010), this Court held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in allowing the jury to view five still images of child pornography found on DVDs seized from the defendant, even though the defendant had stipulated that the DVDs contained child pornography. Id. at 734. Admission of the five still images from the DVDs served valid purposes. See Old Chief v. United States, 519 U.S. 172, 190, 117 S. Ct. 644, 655, 136 L. Ed.2d 574 (1997). Those images proved that the DVDs actually contained child pornography, although it is true that Alfaro-Moncada stipulated to that fact. See id. at 186–87, 117 S. Ct. at 653 (“[The] standard rule [is] that the prosecution is entitled to prove its case by evidence of its own choice, or, more exactly, that a criminal defendant may not stipulate or admit his way out of the full evidentiary force of the case as the Government chooses to present it.”). They also tended to show that Alfaro-Moncada knew he was in possession of child pornography, a fact that he did not stipulate. Even if showing the images to the jury created some risk of injecting emotions into the jury’s decision-making, see id. at 180, 117 S. Ct. at 650, it was not an abuse of discretion for the district court to decide that the risk did not substantially outweigh the still images’ probative value. That is especially true since the jury was only shown a small number of the images on the DVDs — only 5 out of 4,650. See Dodds, 347 F.3d at 899 (finding no abuse of discretion where images had multiple probative purposes, the district court took precautions to prevent unfair prejudice, and only 66 of 3,400 images were shown to the jury). 21 Case: 14-12269 Date Filed: 09/15/2015 Page: 22 of 50 Alfaro-Moncada, 607 F.3d at 734 (alterations in original, emphasis supplied). The images and videos shown to the jury in this case were probative of Bilus’s receipt and possession of child pornography and, therefore, necessary for the prosecution to prove its case. The admission of eleven images and only ten seconds of video clips depicting pornographic images of minors did not cause unfair prejudice. Any prejudice that may have resulted from the publication of the images was outweighed by the probative value of the images to the prosecution’s case. We also specifically decline to adopt a requirement that the district court must view the allegedly prejudicial images before allowing them to be shown to a jury. Moreover, there is no indication that the district court lacked sufficient information about what the images portrayed to make a decision about their probative value and potential to cause undue prejudice.