USA v. SALCIO
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals today released an opinion in USA v. SALCIO, No. 06-10546, a criminal appeal. The panel consisted of Eugene E. Siler, Jr., M. Margaret McKeown, and Carlos T. Bea, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Richard Salcido appeals his conviction and sentence for receipt or distribution of material involving the sexual exploitation of minors, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(2), and possession of material involving the sexual exploitation of minors, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(4)(B). He argues: (1) the district court erred in admitting movie and image files into evidence because the government did not establish that the movie and image files actually depicted a minor; (2) without this evidence, there is insufficient evidence that he possessed authentic material depicting the sexual exploitation of an actual minor; (3) admission of sexually explicit chat logs was irrelevant and unduly prejudicial since he conceded the issue of knowledge; (4) the district court lacked a sufficient factual basis to enhance his sentence pursuant to USSG § 2G2.2(b)(7)(D); and (5) the district court erred by failing to hold an evidentiary hearing to determine the number of images he possessed. We affirm. I. BACKGROUND In February 2005, Detective Ken Hedrick of the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department conducted an investigation into peer-to-peer file sharing of child pornography on the Internet. He utilized a program to locate files containing child pornography by searching for the term “babyj” and compared his search results with a list of known child pornography files. He then obtained a list of IP addresses that had those files available for downloading. Upon finding a computer in California that had child pornography files available for sharing, Hedrick referred the information to the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for additional investigation. The Bureau sent a summons to the Internet service provider to obtain subscriber information for the California computer. . . .