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United Statesv.Rogers

CourtUnited States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
Docket No.18-13532
DecidedMarch 9, 2021
JudgesCircuit Judges Jordan, Jill Pryor, and Branch
Tags
CriminalCriminal ProcedureSentencingSentencing GuidelinesAppellate ProcedureStandard of Review
Case Summary

Joshua Rogers pleaded guilty to producing child pornography depicting sexual activity with a 16-year-old runaway he met online and distributing some of the images and videos; he received a 360-month sentence. He challenged several Guidelines enhancements, the exclusion of questions about the teenager’s other pending statutory-rape cases at sentencing, and the substantive reasonableness of his sentence. The Eleventh Circuit held that one photograph showing Rogers’s hand tightly around the nude teenager’s throat objectively depicted violence and supported the four-level sadism-or-violence enhancement; it did not need to decide whether two videos also qualified. It found no plain error in applying the separate pattern-of-sexual-activity enhancements cumulatively, upheld the sentencing court’s limits on questioning to protect the teenager’s privacy, and found the bottom-of-range sentence reasonable. The 360-month sentence was affirmed.

Opinion

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