Opinion ID: 4520967
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Computer Generated Reports

Text: Juhic argues that the district court erred by admitting computer-generated reports because they contained inadmissible hearsay. The court admitted the exhibits as business records. On appeal, the government abandons the business record exception and argues that the reports were not hearsay at all. Exhibits 1 and 3 were automatically generated CPS reports that include a “child-notable” notation on 474 files offered by Juhic’s account. A “child-notable” file is a category of file that law enforcement provides to CPS when they find known child pornography. The notation is based on law enforcement placing the hash values of previously identified child pornography into the CPS system. The process of searching for “child-notable” files, generating log files, and generating reports is automated. Trial testimony established that the report’s data comes from criminal investigations, including prosecutions, and is considered to be “like a police report.” Exhibits 2 and 4 were automated summary reports of what the ShareazaLE program automatically downloaded from Juhic’s account, which files it tracked, and what has been done with those files. The summary reports include notations showing whether a file was part of a named child pornography series submitted to NCMEC. We review a district court’s contested hearsay rulings for an abuse of discretion and will not reverse if the error was harmless. United States v. Iu, 917 F.3d 1026, 1033 (8th Cir. 2019). “An evidentiary error is harmless if the record demonstrates that the defendant’s substantial rights were unaffected and that the error did not -6- influence or had only a slight influence on the verdict.” United States v. Lundstrom, 880 F.3d 423, 440 (8th Cir. 2018) (quotation marks omitted). Erroneously admitting evidence that is cumulative of other admissible evidence is harmless. Id. at 440–41. Machine-generated records usually do not qualify as “statements” for hearsay purposes but can become hearsay when developed with human input. See MelendezDiaz v. Massachusetts, 557 U.S. 305, 310–11 (2009). In United States v. Morrissey, we determined that a spreadsheet similar to the reports at issue here was hearsay. 895 F.3d 541, 547, 554 (8th Cir. 2018). The spreadsheet indicated which files the testifying officer believed to be child pornography and which files NCMEC had previously identified as child pornography. Id. We determined that the spreadsheet was offered into evidence to prove that the images were child pornography, and we assumed without deciding that the NCMEC confirmations were testimonial. Id. Like in Morrissey, the computer-generated reports offered against Juhic contained inadmissible hearsay. The “child-notable” and “series” notations are outof-court statements offered for the truth of the matter asserted: that the videos and images were child pornography. Fed. R. Evid. 801(c); see Morrissey, 895 F.3d at 554. While the reports may have been computer-generated, human statements and determinations were used to classify the files as child pornography. It was only after a human determined that a file contained child pornography that the hash value or series information was inserted into the computer program and automatically noted in future reports. The human involvement in this otherwise automated process makes the notations hearsay.3 3 This differs from the Rule 1006 summary admitted in United States v. Fechner, where the testifying officer created a summary describing the content of videos downloaded during the investigation. – F.3d –, 2020 WL 1173550 (8th Cir. 2020). In Fechner, the summary described admissible videos and did not make any assumptions or conclusions about what was contained in the video. Here, the “childnotable” and “series” notations are conclusions about what the videos and images -7- However, any error in admitting the notations on the computer-generated reports was harmless. A plethora of other evidence existed to support the jury’s verdict. Juhic told Agent Simon that he had “maybe 1000” videos, that he watched them, and that he shared them with people in chat rooms. Juhic stated that he guessed the children in the videos were between the ages of nine and fourteen. Forensic analysis found over 1,500 videos of child pornography on Juhic’s laptop. The jury saw segments of the videos and was able to make its own determination of whether they were child pornography. Additionally, Agent Simon testified that he compared and matched the videos found on Juhic’s laptop with previous ShareazaLE downloads. Based on the overwhelming amount of evidence supporting Juhic’s conviction, any error in admitting the computer-generated reports was harmless. Substantial evidence existed to convict Juhic without the reports.