Court Opinion

ID: 9957379
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-04-04 15:01:35.440931+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:18:17.873122
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 22-12110    Document: 22-1     Date Filed: 04/04/2024   Page: 1 of 6

                                                  [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                   In the
                United States Court of Appeals
                        For the Eleventh Circuit

                          ____________________

                                No. 22-12110
                          Non-Argument Calendar
                          ____________________

       UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
                                                      Plaintiﬀ-Appellee,
       versus
       BRYAN DAVID SOMERS,

                                                  Defendant-Appellant.

                          ____________________

                 Appeal from the United States District Court
                    for the Northern District of Georgia
                  D.C. Docket No. 4:20-cr-00005-JPB-WEJ-1
                          ____________________
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       2                     Opinion of the Court               22-12110

       Before NEWSOM, GRANT, and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.
       PER CURIAM:
               Bryan Somers appeals his convictions for receiving and
       distributing child pornography on the grounds that the district
       court improperly admitted evidence of prior acts under Federal
       Rule of Evidence 404(b). Because the district court did not abuse
       its discretion by admitting the evidence, we affirm.
                                       I.
              BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer network that permits users to
       share files between other computers connected to the BitTorrent
       network. In June 2019, local law enforcement investigating users
       sharing child pornography via BitTorrent downloaded several
       videos and images of known child pornography from an IP address
       associated with the wireless router located in Somers’s townhouse.
       Somers lived at the townhouse with his wife and his two
       stepchildren, an eight-year-old girl and a nine-year-old boy.
       Federal and state law enforcement agents searched the townhouse,
       finding on Somers’s computer both intact images of child
       pornography as well as evidence of recently deleted files with
       filenames indicating they had contained child pornography.
       Metadata from these files indicated that they had been downloaded
       to Somers’s computer via BitTorrent.
              Somers pleaded not guilty to charges of possessing,
       receiving, and distributing child pornography. Before trial, the
       government moved to introduce evidence of prior acts under
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       22-12110               Opinion of the Court                         3

       Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b). Both of Somers’s stepchildren
       had told investigators that Somers would sometimes look at their
       genitals before they entered the shower. Somers’s eight-year-old
       stepdaughter also said that Somers would sometimes have her sit
       on his lap or on his bed while he inspected her genitals. The
       government sought to admit this evidence to prove Somers’s
       knowledge and intent with respect to the child pornography
       offenses—specifically, it argued that the evidence would “show
       that he had a sexual interest in minors” and that he knew the
       images and videos he downloaded depicted underage children.
       Somers objected, arguing that the prior acts were inadmissible
       character evidence bearing only on his propensity to act a certain
       way. He also argued that, even if probative on some element of
       the offenses, the risk of unfair prejudice would substantially
       outweigh the evidence’s probative value.
               The district court permitted the government to introduce
       the prior-acts evidence at trial, but with several limitations. First,
       the court instructed the jury that it could only be used for the
       purpose of determining whether Somers had the knowledge or
       intent necessary to commit the charged crimes, not whether he
       actually committed those crimes. Second, the court limited the
       government to calling only one of Somers’s two stepchildren to
       testify. Third, the court permitted the government to elicit
       testimony from the child only about Somers’s visual inspections,
       not about any alleged touching. And fourth, the court prohibited
       the government from suggesting that the evidence showed Somers
       had a general sexual interest in children, reasoning that this
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       4                      Opinion of the Court                22-12110

       argument would constitute impermissible character evidence. The
       government opted to call Somers’s stepdaughter as a witness.
               Somers’s principal defense at trial was that because IP
       addresses identify only a router, not a specific device connected to
       that router, someone else could have accessed Somers’s unsecured
       internet connection and have been responsible for the child
       pornography investigators identified from BitTorrent. As for the
       images and deleted files found on Somers’s computer, he argued
       that it was possible that malware or a computer virus could have
       downloaded those files without his knowledge.
             The jury convicted Somers on the charges of distributing
       and receiving child pornography. This is his appeal.
                                        II.
               We review the admission of prior-acts evidence under
       Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b) for abuse of discretion. United
       States v. Calderon, 127 F.3d 1314, 1331 (11th Cir. 1997).
                                       III.
               We apply a three-part test for admissibility of evidence of a
       defendant’s prior acts under Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b).
       “First, the evidence must be relevant to an issue other than the
       defendant’s character. Second, as part of the relevance analysis, the
       evidence must be sufficient to support a finding that the defendant
       actually committed the extrinsic act. Third, the probative value of
       the evidence must not be substantially outweighed by unfair
       prejudice.” Id. at 1330 (quotation omitted). Somers concedes that
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       22-12110              Opinion of the Court                        5

       the second element of the test is met because there was sufficient
       evidence for a jury to conclude that the acts alleged by his
       stepdaughter happened.
              Somers first argues that the evidence of his visual
       examinations of his stepdaughter’s genitals was irrelevant on any
       issues other than character. Because his only defense at trial was
       that someone or something else could have been the source of the
       child pornography files shared by his router and saved on his
       computer, Somers’s argument goes, his visual inspections of his
       stepdaughter’s genitals had no relevance to any issue in the case
       and their introduction could only have been an impermissible
       attempt to show propensity.
              Our Circuit’s precedents foreclose this argument. By
       pleading not guilty, a criminal defendant makes his intent relevant,
       which the government may prove via Rule 404(b) evidence. United
       States v. Zapata, 139 F.3d 1355, 1358 (11th Cir. 1998). Somers’s
       eight-year-old stepdaughter’s testimony about his visual
       inspections of her genitals falls into this category because it is
       evidence that he was familiar with the appearance of children’s
       genitalia and that he intended to look at pornographic images of
       children.
             The fact that Somers’s main defense at trial was that
       someone or something else could have been the source of the child
       pornography images does not change anything. In United States v.
       Kapordelis, a criminal defendant charged with producing, receiving,
       and possessing child pornography argued, like Somers, that
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       6                      Opinion of the Court                  22-12110

       someone else could have been responsible for the images being on
       his computer. 569 F.3d 1291, 1313 (11th Cir. 2009). We held that
       evidence that the defendant had previously engaged in trysts with
       underage boys was relevant, because it tended to show the
       defendant’s knowledge and rebut his identity defense. Id. at 1313–
       14. So too here.
               Next, Somers argues that the unfair prejudice posed by the
       prior-acts evidence substantially outweighed any probative value.
       This argument also fails. We have repeatedly found that an
       appropriate limiting instruction reduces the risk of unfair prejudice
       from the introduction of Rule 404(b) evidence. See, e.g., United
       States v. Diaz-Lizaraza, 981 F.2d 1216, 1225 (11th Cir. 1993); United
       States v. Ramirez, 426 F.3d 1344, 1354 (11th Cir. 2005); United States
       v. Edouard, 485 F.3d 1324, 1346 (11th Cir. 2007). Here, not only did
       the district court issue a limiting instruction to the jury, it limited
       the government to only one prior-acts witness and barred the
       government from eliciting testimony on subjects that would tend
       towards impermissible propensity evidence. The district court did
       not abuse its discretion by concluding these steps ensured that the
       probative value of the stepdaughter’s testimony was not
       substantially outweighed by undue prejudice to Somers.
                                  *      *       *
             The district court did not abuse its discretion by admitting
       the Rule 404(b) evidence. Accordingly, we AFFIRM Somers’s
       conviction.