[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT FILED
________________________ U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
MAY 24, 2012
No. 11-12390
JOHN LEY
Non-Argument Calendar
CLERK
________________________
D.C. Docket No. 7:09-cr-00486-LSC-TMP-1
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
lllll lllllllllllllllllllll llllllllllllllPlaintiff-Appellee,
versus
CHRISTOPHER DAVID COBB,
llllllllllllllllllllllll llll llllllllllllDefendant-Appellant.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Alabama
________________________
(May 24, 2012)
Before TJOFLAT, MARCUS and BLACK, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
A jury found Christopher Cobb guilty on two counts of a three-count
indictment: Count 1, receiving child pornography, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §
2252A(a)(2), and Count 3, possessing child pornography, in violation of 18 U.S.C.
§ 2252A(a)(5)(B). The District Court thereafter sentenced Cobb to concurrent
prison terms of 210 months on Count 1 and 120 months on Count 3. He now
appeals his convictions and total sentence.
I.
Cobb’s indictment was the culmination of an investigation supervised by
Investigator Richard Wilkins assigned to the Internet Crimes Against Children
task force of the Tuscaloosa, Alabama Police Department. As the jury heard at
trial, his duties were to “watch over the Internet for the people praying on young
children, committing crimes, enticing children through computers, [and] to
monitor the peer-to-peer networks such as Limewire, a file-sharing network. A
Limewire user downloads Limewire files to his computer and then decides
whether to share his files over the network. If he does, he may download files
from the network to his own computer and in the process create a “share” folder so
that the files will be available to any other user on the Limewire network.
Wilkins’s program monitored Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and identified
computers that were uploading and downloading images of child pornography.
On May 12, 2009, Wilkins’s program identified a suspicious IP address and via
supoena identified the subscriber as Cobb’s mother. Executing a search warrant
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for her house on June 2, 2009, Tuscaloosa police seized two computers belonging
to Cobb from his bedroom and several CDs, including a pornographic video with
the word “teen” in the title. The computers had been accessing Limewire and
revealed videos and still images of child pornography. One of the images had a
file name including the words “kiddie sex,” “preteen little girls,” “six year old,”
“seven year old lolita,” and “eight year old.” Another image had a file name with
the words “children kids hardcore,” “childporn,” “illegal preteen underage lolita
kiddy child incest,” and “young naked nude little girl.” A week following the
search, Cobb, who was present during the search and identified his computers, fled
to Mexico; he was arrested a year later in New Mexico.
Cobb challenges his convictions on the ground that the District Court
abused its discretion in admitting into evidence Government’s Exhibit 11, a CD
containing videos and still images of child pornography. Wilkins testified that the
videos and images on the exhibit had SHA-1 values matching the SHA-1 values
for the files he found on Cobb’s computers. “SHA” stands for Secured Hash
Algorithm, which is “used to compute a condensed representation of a message or
date file.” United States v. Miknevick, 638 F.3d 178, 181 n.1 (3d Cir. (2011) A
SHA-1 value “can act like a fingerprint.” Id. See also United States v. Sutton, 350
Fed. Appx. 780, 781 n.1 (3d Cir. 2009) (a SHA-1 value is “a kind of digital
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fingerprint”) (unpublished). A national data base contains a listing of SHA-1
values for known images of child pornography. Thus, when Wilkins identified file
names on Cobb’s computers indicative of child pornography, he checked the
national database for the SHA-1 values for those files. When he found a match, he
concluded that a specific file saved on Cobb’s computer contained an image of
child pornography.
The district court, pursuant to Federal Rule Evidence 104, found that
Exhibit 11 contained videos and images that matched videos and images stored on
Cobb’s computer. The evidence was obviously relevant and thus admissible, see
Federal Rule of Evidence 402, unless the District Court’s threshold findings—that
the videos and images on the computers matched what Wilkins found in the
national database—were clearly erroneous. We conclude that they were not. To
the extent that Cobb contends that the evidence should have been excluded under
Federal Rule of Evidence 403, his contention is meritless. Exclusion of relevant
evidence under Rule 403 is an extraordinary remedy, a discretionary call. We find
no abuse of discretion in the call the court made, to admit Exhibit 11 into
evidence.
II.
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Cobb contends that his sentences are unreasonable, that the sentencing
factors of 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) counseled lesser sentences. He is referring to the
Count 1 sentence, 210 months’ incarceration, which drives the sentencing
package. The question is whether the District Court abused its discretion in
selecting such term. Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 41, 128 S.Ct. 586, 591,
169 L.Ed.2d 445, 451-52 (2007). Cobb’s brief does not explain why the 210
prison term is unreasonable. Notwithstanding, given the seriousness of Cobb’s
conduct and the record before the court at sentencing, we could hardly say that the
Count 1 sentence is unreasonable.
AFFIRMED.
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