Opinion ID: 2791906
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Sufficiency of the Factual Resume

Text: Looney shifts his argument from the purely constitutional claims raised before the district court and asserts, instead, that the factual resume to which he stipulated was not sufficient to support his conviction. Looney pleaded guilty to violating 18 U.S.C. § 2251(a), which makes it a violation, inter alia, to produce a visual depiction of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct. 1 Under the statute, federal jurisdiction is invoked if the depiction is “produced . . . using materials that have been mailed, shipped, or transported in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce by any means.” 2 Looney argues that this requires a “meaningful connection to interstate commerce.” To satisfy this requirement, he argues that the government must show (1) that the defendant procured the materials for the purpose of producing child pornography, or, at least, (2) that the relevant materials moved in interstate commerce at a time reasonably near the offense. Looney’s factual resume states only that he used a camera that was manufactured outside of 1 18 U.S.C. § 2251(a) states, in pertinent part: Any person who employs, uses, persuades, induces, entices, or coerces any minor to engage in . . . any sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing any visual depiction of such conduct . . . shall be punished as provided under subsection (e), . . . if that visual depiction was produced or transmitted using materials that have been mailed, shipped, or transported in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer . . . . 2 Id. 3 Case: 14-10203 Document: 00512996587 Page: 4 Date Filed: 04/07/2015 No. 14-10203 Texas; therefore, he argues, his factual resume is insufficient to support his conviction. The government argues that Looney waived this issue by pleading guilty, because Looney’s argument on appeal is a disguised reassertion of his constitutional claims. Alternatively, the government argues that Looney’s argument on appeal is distinct from his argument at the district court such that this court should review Looney’s conviction for plain error. Looney contends that his argument was not waived by his guilty plea and is sufficiently related to the arguments he presented in his motion to dismiss to avoid plain error review. Accordingly, Looney argues that the district court’s interpretation of § 2251(a) should be reviewed de novo. We need not resolve this issue, because even if Looney did not waive his argument by pleading guilty, and even if he sufficiently preserved it in the district court to avoid plain error review, his argument that the factual resume is not sufficient to support his plea clearly lacks merit. In United States v. Dickson, 632 F.3d 186, 192 (5th Cir. 2011), a defendant appealed his conviction of possession of child pornography under 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(4)(B) and production of child pornography under 18 U.S.C. § 2251(a). The jurisdictional hook in both statutes requires the Government to establish that the pornography was produced using materials that had been in interstate commerce. To satisfy this element in Dickson, the Government introduced evidence at trial that the Compact Disc (“CD”) on which the defendant downloaded and preserved pornographic images was manufactured in the Republic of China. 3 We affirmed the defendant’s conviction on both counts. 4 With respect to the possession count, we found that the offense was 3 Dickson, 632 F.3d at 189. 4 Id. at 190-92. 4 Case: 14-10203 Document: 00512996587 Page: 5 Date Filed: 04/07/2015 No. 14-10203 completed when the defendant produced pornography by copying it to a CD made in China and possessed it in Texas. Since all that was required was production using “materials which have been mailed or so shipped,” 5 the CD satisfied the jurisdictional hook. 6 On the production count, the defendant argued that Congress lacked the power to regulate the purely local conduct of saving images to a CD. 7 We, again, rejected the defendant’s argument. This case makes clear that when items transmitted through interstate commerce are used to produce child pornography, it is sufficient to establish this element of the offense and the jurisdictional hook required by the Commerce Clause. It follows that the proof that the camera used to produce the pornography was shipped into Texas from another state is sufficient to support Looney’s conviction. In support of his interpretation of § 2251(a), Looney relies on the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Bond v. United States, 134 S. Ct. 2077 (2014). In Bond, the Supreme Court concluded that the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act of 1998 (“Act”), which makes it a federal crime for a person to “use or possess any chemical weapon” does not cover wholly intrastate conduct. 8 The Act was passed by Congress “[t]o fulfill the United States’ obligations under the Convention” on Chemical Weapons. 9 That Convention, which was ratified by 190 countries, was aimed at “prohibiting the 5 In Dickson, the applicable jurisdictional hook in § 2252(a)(4)(B) states, “produced using materials which have been mailed or so shipped or transported, by any means including by computer.” Additionally, the applicable jurisdictional hook in § 2251(a) states, “produced or transmitted using materials that have been mailed, shipped, or transported in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer.” 6 Dickson, 632 F.3d at 190. 7 Id. at 192. 8 Bond, 134 S. Ct. at 2083, 2093-94. 9 Id. at 2083. 5 Case: 14-10203 Document: 00512996587 Page: 6 Date Filed: 04/07/2015 No. 14-10203 development, stockpiling, or use of chemical weapons by any State Party.” 10 Because the Act was implementing an international war treaty, the Supreme Court held that it could not be used to prosecute local crime where a wife attempted to injure her husband’s pregnant lover by exposing her to an arsenic-based chemical compound, which was procured by the wife from her place of employment. 11 It is apparent to us that the nature of the statute in Bond, implementing an international treaty on chemical weapons, bears no resemblance to the statute at issue in today’s case. Unlike the chemical weapons statute in Bond, there is every indication that Congress intended to exercise all of its power to regulate child pornography, including punishing purely local conduct so long as the minimal jurisdictional hook is satisfied. We are satisfied that Bond does not undermine our precedent requiring only that the materials used in producing the pornography have been in, or at least affect, interstate commerce. Looney admits to using a camera that has been in interstate commerce. Therefore, his argument regarding the sufficiency of his factual resume to support his guilty plea is foreclosed by our precedent, which is not undermined by Bond.