United States v. Charles Browne, Jr.

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
• Decided: July 8, 2024
• Docket: 23-1925
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT _______________

No. 23-1925 _______________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

v.

CHARLES F. BROWNE, JR., Appellant _______________

On Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey (D.C. No. 3:20-cr-00965-001) District Judge: Honorable Michael A. Shipp _______________ Submitted Under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a) on July 8, 2024

Before: BIBAS, FREEMAN, and RENDELL, Circuit Judges

(Filed: July 8, 2024) _______________

OPINION* _______________

BIBAS, Circuit Judge.

Charles Browne was convicted of possessing, soliciting, and receiving child pornogra-

phy as well as obstructing a federal investigation. Though he challenges two evidentiary

rulings, we will affirm his conviction.

* This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and, under I.O.P. 5.7, is not binding precedent. Charles’s Dropbox cloud-storage account, tied to his email address, held dozens of vid-

eos and images of child porn. That account also held his résumé and was created from his

former home address. A few hours after Dropbox disabled that account, a new one was

created from his workplace using another of his email addresses.

An FBI agent and a police officer questioned Charles about the child porn in the accounts.

He denied any knowledge of Dropbox or child porn. After they left, he took his iPad and

iPhone and threw them into a bay to destroy any evidence. But the FBI had a diver recover

the devices and extracted more than a thousand child-porn files from them.

At trial, the jury convicted on all counts. Charles unsuccessfully tried to blame his

brother, Scott, who visited his home weekly and used his iPad. He sought to introduce

emails that Scott had sent Charles’s defense counsel plus texts and statements by Scott to

Charles’s private investigator claiming responsibility for the child porn. The District Court

excluded this hearsay as untrustworthy and not clearly against Scott’s penal interest. It also

admitted a statement in Charles’s pretrial brief denying all the government’s allegations,

contradicting Charles’s later admission that he had obstructed the investigation. We review

both evidentiary rulings for abuse of discretion. United States v. Caldwell, 760 F.3d 267,

289 (3d Cir. 2014); United States v. Bansal, 663 F.3d 634, 666 (3d Cir. 2011).

The District Court properly excluded Scott’s out-of-court statements as hearsay. To

admit them as statements against interest, the court would have had to find both that (A) a

reasonable person in Scott’s position would not have said them unless they were true be-

cause they tended to expose him to criminal liability and (B) circumstances clearly confirm

2 that the statements were trustworthy. Fed. R. Evid. 804(b)(3). So if either prong is not met,

the statements are inadmissible hearsay.

Because the statements were untrustworthy, the second prong is not satisfied. Scott is

Charles’s brother and was looking for ways to help him out. He did not make these state-

ments until several years after Charles’s arrest, and he had been drinking. Then he changed

his story the next day, deflecting blame to a Bangladeshi hacker. So the District Court rea-

sonably found that Charles had not borne his burden of showing trustworthiness.

Charles also challenges the District Court’s admission of his pretrial brief denying all

the allegations, which the government argues it offered solely for impeachment purposes

after Charles admitted guilt on the obstruction charge. Even if that was error, it was harm-

less. The evidence against Charles was overwhelming. His Dropbox accounts, iPhone, and

iPad were full of child pornography. The Dropbox accounts used two of his email addresses

and held his résumé. He admitted throwing both devices into the bay to destroy them,

showing consciousness of guilt. Those devices and accounts were used regularly not only

at Charles’s home, but also at the crematorium where he worked, which Scott was unlikely

to visit. Given this overwhelming evidence, any dispute about whether Charles at first denied

obstructing the investigation did not affect the outcome of his trial. We will thus affirm.