Court Opinion

ID: 9502898
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 19:34:25.693435+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:03:14.588860
License: Public Domain

HELENE N. WHITE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. I find no basis on which to conclude that the district court abused its discretion in excluding the evidence at issue. The majority finds fault with the court’s conclusion that the real issue at trial will not be Sims’s intent but whether he took a substantial step towards the creation of child pornography, which conclusion was based on the court’s understanding that Sims’s apparent defense “is that the videos of M.P. do not depict the lascivious depiction of the victim’s pubic area, as required by statute.” The majority concludes that the court’s reasoning and conclusion were incorrect because the government is not required to show that the videos actually depicted lascivious conduct, only that Sims attempted to create videos depicting such conduct. But the district court did not misapprehend the elements of the offense; rather, the court simply made a ruling based upon the posture of the case at the time. If in fact Sims does not intend to challenge his intent and concedes that he hoped to secure an image of M.P. engaged in sexually explicit conduct, it matters not whether that is a sufficient defense to the charge. What matters is *837that he does not contest his intent. If the nature of his defense changes and he takes the position that he filmed M.P. accidentally, or did not intend to capture the images he did, or intended to film her for artistic purposes only, the court can and should reconsider its ruling. However, on this record, I find no abuse of discretion.