Court Opinion

ID: 9398226
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-05-30 17:01:27.144679+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:19:31.668511
License: Public Domain

NOT FOR PUBLICATION                           FILED
                    UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS                       MAY 30 2023
                                                                      MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
                                                                       U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
                           FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,                       No.    21-50266

                Plaintiff-Appellee,             D.C. No.
                                                2:19-cr-00495-DSF-1
 v.

VAHE SARKISS,                                   MEMORANDUM*

                Defendant-Appellant.

                   Appeal from the United States District Court
                      for the Central District of California
                    Dale S. Fischer, District Judge, Presiding

                       Argued and Submitted March 7, 2023
                              Pasadena, California

Before: WATFORD and COLLINS, Circuit Judges, and S. MURPHY,** District
Judge.

      Appellant Vahe Sarkiss appealed his one-count jury trial conviction for

possession of child pornography under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2252A(a)(5)(B), (b)(2). After

Sarkiss was previously convicted for possession of child pornography in 2013, a

      *
             This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
      **
             The Honorable Stephen Joseph Murphy, III, United States District
Judge for the Eastern District of Michigan, sitting by designation.
woman found a flash drive in the laundry room of Sarkiss’s trailer park that

contained images of Sarkiss, whom the woman recognized, and of naked young

males. The flash drive was provided to the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department,

which in turn gave it to Sarkiss’ probation officer. Several probation officers

searched Sarkiss’s trailer and discovered a computer in the bed of his pickup truck

and a hard drive in the trunk of his car; those both contained explicit images of

children. At trial, the jury returned a verdict and convicted Sarkiss of one count of

possession of child pornography under § 2252A. The district court sentenced

Sarkiss to 135 months’ imprisonment and a life term of supervised release. Sarkiss

then raised six arguments on appeal. For the reasons below, we affirm the district

court.

         First, Sarkiss argued that the district court erred in admitting his prior

conviction for possession of child pornography under Federal Rule of Evidence

414(a): “In a criminal case in which a defendant is accused of child molestation,

the court may admit evidence that the defendant committed any other child

molestation.” Id. (emphasis added). The term “child molestation” includes the

possession of child pornography under § 2252A. See United States v. Hanson, 936

F.3d 876, 881 (9th Cir. 2019). The district court admitted the prior conviction

because it was relevant under Federal Rule of Evidence 403 and because it

satisfied our court’s five-factor test for determining whether to admit evidence of a

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prior act of sexual misconduct. See United States v. LeMay, 260 F.3d 1018, 1028

(9th Cir. 2001). It therefore did not abuse its discretion by admitting the prior

conviction. See United States v. Halamek, 5 F.4th 1081, 1087 (9th Cir. 2021).

      Nor did the district court err in allowing the Government to use the prior

conviction to make a propensity argument. Rule 414 explicitly provides, without

limitation or exception, that a prior conviction “may be considered on any matter

to which it is relevant.” Fed. R. Evid. 414(a). This use of propensity evidence

does not violate due process, we have held, because “there is nothing

fundamentally unfair about the allowance of propensity evidence under Rule 414”

as long as the “protections of Rule 403 remain in place.” LeMay, 260 F.3d at

1026. What is more, we clarified in LeMay that the Government may make

propensity arguments in cases involving child molestation so long as the evidence

is not unfairly prejudicial under LeMay’s five-factor test. Id. at 1026–28. Since

the district court correctly concluded that the prior conviction was admissible

under the five LeMay factors, the district court did not err in allowing the

Government to use Sarkiss’s prior conviction to make propensity arguments.

      Second, Sarkiss argued that the district court erred in denying his motion to

suppress evidence from the probation officers’ search of his trailer because the

officers lacked reasonable suspicion for the search. See United States v. Knights,

534 U.S. 112, 121 (2001) (requiring “no more than reasonable suspicion to conduct

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a search of [a] probationer’s house”). Reasonable suspicion requires “specific,

articulable facts which, when considered with objective and reasonable inferences,

form a basis for particularized suspicion” that a person is violating the law. United

States v. Nault, 41 F.4th 1073, 1081 (9th Cir. 2022) (citation omitted). Here, the

district court properly found that the combination of the suspected child

pornography on the flash drive and Sarkiss’s prior conviction for possession of

child pornography was sufficient to establish reasonable suspicion.

      Third, Sarkiss argued that the district court erred in denying Sarkiss’s

motion to dismiss the superseding indictment and by incorrectly instructing the

jury. Sarkiss argued that the superseding indictment failed to allege (and the jury

was not instructed to find) that he had possessed child pornography and knew that

the images were either transported through interstate commerce or produced using

materials that had been transported through interstate commerce. See 18 U.S.C.

§ 2252A(a)(5)(B). The statute, however, does not require the Government to

allege or prove that Sarkiss knew his crime had an interstate nexus. At most, the

jurisdictional element serves to make the crime a federal one. See Torres v. Lynch,

578 U.S. 452, 457, 467–68 (2016).

      Fourth, Sarkiss argued that the district court erred in ruling that Sarkiss

opened the door to allow admission of a previously excluded sexually explicit

anime image. Under the “opening the door” doctrine, “the government may

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introduce otherwise inadmissible evidence when the defendant opens the door by

introducing potentially misleading testimony.” United States v. Osazuwa, 564

F.3d 1169, 1175 (9th Cir. 2009) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).

The district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that, in light of

Sarkiss’s trial testimony specifically denying any sexual interest in children, the

probative value of the anime image in rebutting that testimony outweighed any

potential for unfair prejudice. See Fed. R. Evid. 403. Indeed, the district court’s

decision was simply a follow-through on what it had previously stated it would do

if Sarkiss “attempted to deny any sexual interest in children or claimed he did not

view pornography.” At trial, Sarkiss did precisely that. Thus, Sarkiss’s attempt to

deny any sexual interest in children opened the door for the Government to

introduce the previously inadmissible anime image.

      Fifth, Sarkiss argued that the district court violated Federal Rule of Criminal

Procedure 32 by not ruling on some of his objections to the presentence report.

But the district court did not err because it appropriately considered Sarkiss’s

objections to the presentence report. Indeed, the district court reviewed the

presentence report, provided the parties a chance to object at sentencing,

considered the relevant sentencing factors under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), and

expressly considered Sarkiss’s personal and health history before imposing a

sentence. The district court also sufficiently resolved all factual objections when it

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stated that it found “the [presentencing] report to be accurate and correct in all

respects that would have an impact on the sentence” and explained that it was

thereby “adopt[ing] the report and the calculation of the advisory guidelines.” See

United States v. Riley, 335 F.3d 919, 931 (9th Cir. 2003).

      Sarkiss’s other procedural objections also lack merit. The district court did

not err in considering his prior conviction because a jury does not need to find this

fact. See Alleyne v. United States, 570 U.S. 99, 111 & n.1 (2013). Nor did it err by

double counting Sarkiss’s recidivism because his prior conviction affected the

sentencing analysis only by raising his criminal history category while leaving his

offense level unchanged. Sarkiss’s objections to his sentencing enhancements,

including for possessing more than 600 images of child pornography, also fail

because the district court properly found that a preponderance of the evidence

supports these enhancements. See United States v. Treadwell, 593 F.3d 990, 1000

(9th Cir. 2010), overruled on other grounds by United States v. Miller, 953 F.3d

1095 (9th Cir. 2020).

      Sixth, Sarkiss argued that the sentence imposed by the district court was

unreasonable. But the sentence was at the low end of the guidelines. And the

district court adequately considered the evidence, including Sarkiss’s personal and

health history, along with the other § 3553(a) factors in determining the sentence.

We therefore conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion by

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imposing the low-end sentence. See United States v. Autery, 555 F.3d 864, 871

(9th Cir. 2009).

      AFFIRMED.

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