United States v. Thomas Luke Guagliardo

278 F.3d 868, 2002 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 460, 2002 Daily Journal DAR 648, 2002 U.S. App. LEXIS 715, 2002 WL 59188
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
DecidedJanuary 17, 2002
Docket01-50066
StatusPublished
Cited by115 cases

This text of 278 F.3d 868 (United States v. Thomas Luke Guagliardo) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Thomas Luke Guagliardo, 278 F.3d 868, 2002 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 460, 2002 Daily Journal DAR 648, 2002 U.S. App. LEXIS 715, 2002 WL 59188 (9th Cir. 2002).

Opinions

PER CURIAM Opinion; Partial Concurrence and Partial Dissent by Judge FERNANDEZ

PER CURIAM:

Thomas L. Guagliardo challenges his conviction for possession of child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(5)(B), and three conditions attached to his supervised release. We affirm the conviction but remand for resen-tencing.

I.

On July 1, 1997, Guagliardo “conversed” in an Internet chat room with an undercover police detective. Guagliardo claimed to have a collection of 7,500 images and 105 movies of pre-teen child pornography. Later, Guagliardo met with another undercover officer and gave him three computer disks containing pornographic images of preadolescent girls.

Guagliardo was charged with one count of violating 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(5)(B), which at that time made it a crime to

knowingly possessf] any book, magazine, periodical, film, videotape, computer disk, or any other material that contains 3 or more images of child pornography that has been mailed, or shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer, or that was produced using materials that have been mailed, or shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer.1

Guagliardo was convicted after a bench trial. He was sentenced to 15 months’ imprisonment followed by three years of supervised release.

II.

Guagliardo argues that there was -insufficient evidence of a connection to interstate or foreign commerce to satisfy the statutory requirement. Although there may have been insufficient evidence that his images had been “transported” in interstate commerce, we affirm the conviction because Guagliardo “produced” the images with materials from interstate commerce when he copied them onto computer disks.

[871]*871The government proved that Guagliardo copied his images onto computer disks that had been manufactured abroad.2 Guagliar-do, however, compares a computer disk to an empty filing cabinet that passively stores information, and thus argues that the disks did not “produce” the images. The analogy, however, is strained. When the file containing the image is copied onto a disk, the original is left intact and a new copy of the image is created, so the process “produces” an image. See United States v. Lacy, 119 F.3d 742 (9th Cir.1997) (holding that images were “produced” when they were downloaded onto a computer); see also United States v. Angle, 234 F.3d 326, 341 (7th Cir.2000) (holding that visual depictions “are ‘produced’ when computer equipment, including computer diskettes, are used to copy the depictions onto the diskettes”), cert. denied, 533 U.S. 932, 121 S.Ct. 2556, 150 L.Ed.2d 722 (2001).3 Thus, Guagliardo “produced” images of child pornography with materials from foreign commerce when he copied the images onto the disks.

III.

To prove that Guagliardo’s images were of actual children, rather than computer-edited images of adults, Free Speech Coalition v. Reno, 198 F.3d 1083 (9th Cir.1999), cert. granted, 531 U.S. 1124, 121 S.Ct. 876, 148 L.Ed.2d 788 (2001), the government introduced evidence that Gua-gliardo’s images had been published in magazines dating from the 1970s and 1980s, before computer “morphing” technology was available. A government witness, William Siebert, testified that he had worked as a mail inspector for the Customs Service during the mid-1980s and that he had personally encountered magazines that contained copies of Guagliardo’s images. He also stated that he might have written investigative reports about those magazines. The district court denied Gua-gliardo’s request under the Jencks Apt to require the government to produce those reports.

We review for abuse of discretion a district court’s denial of a discovery motion made pursuant to the Jencks Act. See United States v. Nash, 115 F.3d 1431, 1440 (9th Cir.1997). We need not decide whether the district court abused its discretion, however, because any error would be harmless. See United States v. Brumel-Alvarez, 991 F.2d 1452, 1456 (9th Cir.1992). Independent of Siebert’s testimony, the district court also found that a [872]*872sufficient number of the magazines bore copyright dates from the 1970s, which proved that they had been in circulation prior to the development of morphing technology. Consequently, even if Seibert’s reports were available and somehow discredited his factual testimony, there would be sufficient independent evidence to sustain the judgment.

IV.

Finally, Guagliardo disputes three conditions attached to his supervised release. First, he challenges a condition that he not possess “any pornography,” including legal adult pornography. In United States v. Bee, 162 F.3d 1232 (9th Cir.1998), we recognized that a probationer does not have an unqualified First Amendment right to “sexually stimulating or sexually oriented materials.” A probationer, however, has a separaté due process right to conditions of supervised release that are sufficiently clear to inform him of what conduct will result in his being returned to prison. See Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108-09, 92 S.Ct. 2294, 33 L.Ed.2d 222 (1972) (“we insist that laws give the person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited so that he may act accordingly”); United States v. Schave, 186 F.3d 839, 843 (7th Cir.1999).

As the Third Circuit recognized in United States v. Loy, 237 F.3d 251, 263 (3d Cir.2001), a probationer cannot reasonably understand what is encompassed by a blanket prohibition on “pornography.” The term itself is entirely subjective; unlike “obscenity,” for example, it lacks any recognized legal definition. The district court here could not itself define the term, stating only that “The Court won’t have any trouble defining it if [Guagliardo] violates it.” This after-the-fact definition, however, leaves Guagliardo in the untenable position of “discovering] the meaning of his supervised release condition only under continual threat of reimprisonment, in sequential hearings before the court.” Loy, 237 F.3d at 258.

The government asserts that any vagueness is cured by the probation officer’s authority to interpret the restriction.

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278 F.3d 868, 2002 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 460, 2002 Daily Journal DAR 648, 2002 U.S. App. LEXIS 715, 2002 WL 59188, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-thomas-luke-guagliardo-ca9-2002.