State of Tennessee v. Ryan Patrick Broadrick

CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee
DecidedSeptember 4, 2018
DocketM2017-01136-CCA-R3-CD
StatusPublished

This text of State of Tennessee v. Ryan Patrick Broadrick (State of Tennessee v. Ryan Patrick Broadrick) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State of Tennessee v. Ryan Patrick Broadrick, (Tenn. Ct. App. 2018).

Opinion

09/04/2018 IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TENNESSEE AT NASHVILLE June 20, 2018 Session

STATE OF TENNESSEE v. RYAN PATRICK BROADRICK

Appeal from the Criminal Court for Davidson County No. 2016-C-1897 Mark J. Fishburn, Judge

No. M2017-01136-CCA-R3-CD

The Defendant, Ryan Patrick Broadrick, pled guilty to statutory rape, a Class E felony, in exchange for a three-year sentence on probation. Following a hearing, the trial court ordered that the Defendant was required to register as a sex offender. The Defendant appeals, arguing (1) that this court should review the trial court’s decision using a de novo standard of review, rather than an abuse of discretion with a presumption of reasonableness standard; (2) that the trial court was not authorized by Tennessee Code Annotated section 39-13-506(d)(2)(B) to consider anything other than the facts and circumstances of the statutory rape offense to which the Defendant pled guilty; (3) that due process principles prohibited the trial court from considering the nolled sexual exploitation of a minor count of the indictment that pertained to photographs found on the Defendant’s phone; (4) that due process of law afforded him the right to perform independent forensic testing of the photographs found on his phone; (5) that the trial court failed to articulate for the record how it took into account “the facts and circumstances of the offense” as required by the statute; and (6) that the photographs relied upon by the trial court did not depict minors engaged in sexual activity. After review, we affirm the judgments of the trial court. However, we remand the case for entry of judgment forms for each count of the indictment.

Tenn. R. App. P. 3 Appeal as of Right; Judgments of the Criminal Court Affirmed; Case Remanded

D. KELLY THOMAS, JR., J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which ROBERT L. HOLLOWAY, JR., and TIMOTHY L. EASTER, JJ., joined.

Dawn Deaner, District Public Defender; Emma Rae Tennent and Melissa Bourne (on appeal); and Jared Mollenkof (at hearing), Assistant District Public Defenders, for the appellant, Ryan Patrick Broadrick. Herbert H. Slatery III, Attorney General and Reporter; M. Todd Ridley, Assistant Attorney General; Glenn R. Funk, District Attorney General; and Chad Butler and Alyssa Henning, Assistant District Attorneys General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.

OPINION FACTUAL BACKGROUND

On November 7, 2014, a Davidson County grand jury returned an indictment against the Defendant charging him with solicitation of a minor in Count 1 and sexual exploitation of a minor in Count 2. See Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 39-13-528, -17-1003. Count 1 alleged that the thirty-nine-year-old Defendant, on December 5, 2013, “did by means of oral, written or electronic communication, electronic mail or internet services, directly or through another, intentionally command, request, hire, persuade, invite or attempt to induce” the seventeen-year-old victim, E.B.,1 “a person [the Defendant] knew or should have known was less than eighteen (18) years of age, to engage in conduct that, if completed, would constitute . . . the offense of [a]ggravated [s]tatutory [r]ape . . . .” Count 2 claimed that the Defendant, on December 11, 2013, “did knowingly possess material that included a minor engaged in sexual activity or simulated sexual activity that is patently offensive where the number of individual images is less than fifty (50) . . . .” Count 2 related to images that were recovered from the Defendant’s cell phone after he was interviewed at the Goodlettsville Police Department in relation to Count 1. The trial court subsequently granted the Defendant’s motion to sever the charges.

Relevant to the solicitation charge, the State filed a notice of intent to use the Defendant’s internet history from his phone at trial, which included visits to multiple websites advertising pornography of teenage girls (e.g., innocentcute.com, getmoreteens.com, nakedyounggirl.com, teensexhg.com, and underwearteenies.com). The Defendant then filed a motion “to exclude the admission of any and all images the State recovered from [the Defendant’s] phone that the State [was] not alleging [were] depictions of children involved in sexual activity or lewdly displaying their genitalia” and “of all other browsing history, search queries and other irrelevant information recovered from the phone.”

The Defendant also filed a motion to compel requesting that the State be required to provide the defense with electronic copies of the images “in order to adequately prepare [a] defense” and “to effectively cross-examine the State’s witnesses.” According to the motion, “[t]he defense intend[ed] to run reverse image searches for the purpose of determining where else these images exist[ed] on the internet” in an effort “to attempt to learn the identity of the models involved.” A hearing was held on August 10, 2016,

1 It is the policy of this court to protect the identity of minors who were the victims of sex crimes. -2- during which the trial court considered both the Defendant’s motion to compel and the motion to exclude.

At the hearing, the State called Metro Nashville Police Detective Chad Gish, and he was qualified as an expert in device forensic analysis. Detective Gish discussed the cell phone extraction performed on the Defendant’s phone, including recovery of the Defendant’s internet history, bookmarks, and saved images. Detective Gish opined that the Defendant “was definitely looking for young girls, sex and child pornography.”

Detective Gish testified regarding reverse image searches. He explained that such searches required uploading the photograph into a program, which would use facial and picture recognition to identify the victim. According to Detective Gish, uploading a “potential child pornography image to the Internet” to perform such a search would be a crime. According to Detective Gish, suspected child pornography images were sent to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (“NCMEC”), and NCMEC, in an effort to determine the age and identity of the individual, would run any provided photographs against every known victim in NCMEC database. Metro Nashville Police Detective Michael Adkins also testified about the process of reverse image searches, as well as the only legal method of identifying known victims of child pornography through the NCMEC database.

While the State had permitted the defense to inspect the photographs, the State refused to provide the defense with electronic copies for reverse image searching, opining that to do so would be illegal. The trial court asked defense counsel to “come back” when he knew “exactly how [the reverse image search was] going to be done and under what circumstances, and [by] whom.” Defense counsel agreed. The trial court took both motions under advisement.

On September 14, 2016, the trial court entered an order granting the motion to exclude because the Defendant conceded knowingly possessing the photographs of nude minors. The State thereafter obtained a superseding indictment, which, in addition to the two original charges, added two counts of trafficking E.B. for a commercial sex act. See Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-13-309. The State also filed a motion for the trial court to reconsider its ruling excluding the Defendant’s internet history. Shortly thereafter, the State “entered a nolle prosequi” on Count 2. It appears from the record that a hearing was held on October 26, 2016,2 during which the trial court considered the State’s motion to reconsider and heard additional evidence on the Defendant’s motion to compel.

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Bluebook (online)
State of Tennessee v. Ryan Patrick Broadrick, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-of-tennessee-v-ryan-patrick-broadrick-tenncrimapp-2018.