USA v. Ray Eugene Collins

Filing

Opinion issued by court as to Appellant Ray Eugene Collins. Decision: Affirmed. Opinion type: Non-Published. Opinion method: Per Curiam. The opinion is also available through the Court's Opinions page at this link http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions.

Case: 17-10595

Date Filed: 09/08/2017

Page: 1 of 3

[DO NOT PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
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No. 17-10595
Non-Argument Calendar
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D.C. Docket No. 4:16-cr-00002-RH-CAS-1
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
versus
RAY EUGENE COLLINS,
Defendant - Appellant.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Florida
________________________
(September 8, 2017)
Before HULL, WILSON and WILLIAM PRYOR, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Ray Collins appeals his convictions for receiving child pornography, 18
U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(2) , (b)(1), distributing child pornography, id., and possessing

Case: 17-10595

Date Filed: 09/08/2017

Page: 2 of 3

child pornography involving a prepubescent minor and a minor under the age of
12, id. § 2252A(a)(5)(B), (b)(2). Collins challenges the admission of short
segments of two child pornography videos discovered on his computer. We affirm.
We review the admission of evidence for abuse of discretion. United States
v. Dodds, 347 F.3d 893, 897 (11th Cir. 2003).
The district court did not abuse its discretion. Collins argues that the
prejudicial effect of the explicit video segments outweighed their probative value
based on his stipulation that they contained child pornography, but the government
was not required to accept a stipulation that was “no match for the robust evidence
that would be used to prove” Collins’s crimes, Old Chief v. United States, 519 U.S.
172, 189 (1997), particularly when he contested the issues of identity and mens
rea. See Parr v. United States, 255 F.2d 86, 88 (5th Cir. 1958). In recognition that
all incriminating evidence is inherently prejudicial, Federal Rule of Evidence 403
“permits a district court to exclude relevant evidence [only] when its probative
value is substantially outweighed by its unfairly prejudicial nature.” United States
v. Alfaro-Moncada, 607 F.3d 720, 734 (11th Cir. 2010). The video segments, each
of which depicted a girl between four and eight performing oral sex on a man,
were probative of identity – that is, whether the videos would appeal to the prurient
interest of and be downloaded by Collins or, as he suggested, by his female
roommate. The video segments also were probative of whether Collins, a computer
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Case: 17-10595

Date Filed: 09/08/2017

Page: 3 of 3

programmer, knew of and intended to collect child pornography on his computer.
See id. And the government, as requested by the district court, limited the amount
of footage shown to the jury. Of the dozens of videos discovered on Collins’s
computer, the government played 10 seconds of one video and 14 seconds of a
second video. See Dodds, 347 F.3d at 899. “Even if showing the images to the jury
created some risk of injecting emotions into the jury’s decision-making, it was not
an abuse of discretion for the district court to decide that the risk did not
substantially outweigh the . . . probative value” of the video segments. AlfaroMoncada, 607 F.3d at 734 (citation omitted).
We AFFIRM Collins’s conviction.

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