United States v. Hughes

62 M.J. 621, 2005 CCA LEXIS 408, 2005 WL 3556419
CourtUnited States Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals
DecidedDecember 30, 2005
DocketCGCMG 0194; Docket No. 1205
StatusPublished

This text of 62 M.J. 621 (United States v. Hughes) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering United States Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Hughes, 62 M.J. 621, 2005 CCA LEXIS 408, 2005 WL 3556419 (afcca 2005).

Opinion

FELICETTI, Judge.

Appellant was tried by general court-martial, military judge alone. Pursuant to his pleas of guilty, entered in accordance with a pretrial agreement, Appellant was convicted of one specification of violating 18 U.S.C. § 2252A by knowingly possessing child pornography that had been transported in interstate or foreign commerce, in violation of Article 134, Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), 10 U.S.C. § 934. The military judge sentenced Appellant to a bad-conduct discharge, a reduction to E-l, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for eight months. The Convening Authority approved the sentence as adjudged. The pretrial agreement had no effect on the sentence.

Before this Court, Appellant has assigned three errors: (1) that the Government lost personal jurisdiction over him when it failed to take steps within a reasonable period of time to bring him to trial; (2) that the chain of custody of the laptop and compact discs was not maintained, rendering the evidence unreliable; and (3) that Appellant’s plea was improvident because the Child Pornography Protection Act (CPPA), 18 U.S.C. § 2252A, does not apply extraterritorially.

Appellant raised the third assignment of error after our higher Court’s decision in United States v. Martinelli holding that the CPPA, 18 U.S.C. § 2252A does not have extraterritorial application. United States v. Martinelli, 62 M.J. 52, 53-54 (C.A.AF.2005). This third assignment of error is controlling and will be discussed. Our decision with [622]*622respect to this assignment moots the first and second assignments of error.

Facts

Appellant enlisted in the Coast Guard Reserve on 6 October 2000 for a period of eight years. He was ordered to active duty on 20 March 2002 and deployed with his unit to Bahrain for port security duties as part of Operation Southern Watch. Prior to this deployment, while within the United States, Appellant ran a program called “WinMX” to search the internet for pornography and to download it to his personal computer. The search terms he used to locate images included the phrases “school girls,” “Lolita teen,” and “illegal porn.” He obtained a significant amount of pornography and stored much of it on laptop computers, a removable hard drive, or CD’s.

Conflicting evidence was presented at trial as to when Appellant obtained actual knowledge that he had downloaded child pornography during these internet searches. According to a sworn pretrial statement admitted during the pre-sentencing portion of the trial, he received and intentionally downloaded some images of child pornography. His actual knowledge was based on file names such as “child porn” and direct observation of some images. On five or six occasions, Appellant intentionally downloaded images of child pornography within the United States, knowing it was unlawful to do so. He retained some of these images on the computers and CD’s transported to Bahrain. Other child pornography images, however, were downloaded by accident and not observed by Appellant until after he arrived in Bahrain.

According to Appellant’s providence inquiry testimony, he never downloaded child pornography on purpose. He, therefore, did not know he possessed any such images until first viewing them in Bahrain. This issue, however, was not significant at the time of trial since Appellant was charged with knowingly possessing the images in Bahrain. The conflict with the sworn pretrial statement was not addressed during the providence inquiry, nor did it cause the military judge to reopen that inquiry.

On or about May 2002, an investigation began into Appellant’s alleged possession of child pornography in Bahrain. Appellant was relieved of his normal duties and assigned to a U.S. Navy general labor team. Eventually, he returned to the U.S. and was assigned to the Integrated Support Command (ISC) New Orleans where he remained on continuous active duty until the date of trial, 15 October 2003.

Assignment III

Appellant pled guilty to possessing child pornography while deployed to Bahrain, in violation of the CPPA, 18 U.S.C. § 2252A, under clause three of Article 134, UCMJ. Appellant asserts that his plea was improvident. We agree, finding that the record shows a ‘“substantial basis’ in law and fact for questioning the guilty plea.” United States v. Prater, 32 M.J. 433, 436 (C.M.A. 1991).

Our higher Court recently held that the CPPA, 18 U.S.C. § 2252A, does not have extraterritorial application. United States v. Martinelli 62 M.J. 52, 53-54 (C.A.A.F.2005). In doing so, however, the Court also stated that jurisdiction over extraterritorial violations of the CPPA is proper if any part of a continuing offense occurred within the United States. Id. at 63 (discussing United States v. Moncini 882 F.2d 401 (9th Cir. 1989)). Under this analysis, U.S. jurisdiction existed in United States v. Moncini over the act of mailing child pornography from Italy to the United States, even though the act was lawful in Italy. Moncini, 882 F.2d at 403-04. Additionally, U.S. jurisdiction existed over transmitting child pornography by email from Germany that “flowed through” a computer server in the United States, even though there was no indication that anyone in the United States received or viewed the images. Martinelli, 62 M.J. at 55, 63-64, 77-78. This holding is consistent with the frequently repeated statement that jurisdiction is proper if any part of the offense occurs in the United States. Martinelli 62 M.J. at 63; United States v. Reeves, 62 M.J. 88, 93-94 (C.A.A.F.2005); United States v. Hays, 62 M.J. 158, 167 (C.A.A.F.2005); Moncini 882 F.2d at 403.

The analysis, however, cannot stop with this broad statement that jurisdiction is [623]*623proper if any part of the offense occurs in the United States. For example, no U.S. jurisdiction existed under the CPPA when individuals in Germany used web-based email accounts located on computers in the United States to receive child pornography. There was no domestic aspect of the offense even though the images passed through computers in the United States, resided or were stored on computers in the United States, or were reproduced on computers in the United States before being transmitted to Germany. Martinelli, 62 M.J. at 64, 77-78; Reeves, 62 M.J. at 94, 98.

Additionally, our higher Court has provided inconsistent guidance on the importance of how the charges describe the location of the alleged misconduct. U.S. jurisdiction may be precluded if the accused is charged exclusively with overseas misconduct. See Hays, 62 M.J. at 167. Under such circumstances, the Court need not even consider other facts establishing that the relevant emails were sent from web-based email servers located in the United States. Id. at 167, n. 1,173.

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Related

United States v. Hays
62 M.J. 158 (Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, 2005)
United States v. Reeves
62 M.J. 88 (Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, 2005)
United States v. Martinelli
62 M.J. 52 (Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, 2005)
United States v. Prater
32 M.J. 433 (United States Court of Military Appeals, 1991)

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Bluebook (online)
62 M.J. 621, 2005 CCA LEXIS 408, 2005 WL 3556419, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-hughes-afcca-2005.