United States v. Skaggs

25 F.4th 494

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.Charles SKAGGS, Jr., Defendant-Appellant.

No. 20-1229

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued November 30, 2021

Decided February 2, 2022

MaryAnn Totino Mindrum, Kyle Matthew Sawa, Bob Wood, Attorneys, Office of the United States Attorney, Indianapolis, IN, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Kent R. Carlson, Attorney, Carlson & Associates, Chicago, IL, Charles Skaggs, Jr., United States Penitentiary, Tucson, AZ, for Defendant-Appellant.

Before Kanne, Wood, and Hamilton, Circuit Judges.

Kanne, Circuit Judge.

Defendant Charles Skaggs, Jr. was charged with twelve counts related to his production and possession of child pornography, based on evidence found in several thumb drives seized from him pursuant to a warrantless border search at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Skaggs filed a motion to suppress the evidence, which the district court denied. After a bench trial, the district court convicted Skaggs of all counts and, believing a life sentence was mandatory, sentenced him to life in prison. Skaggs now challenges the denial of his motion to suppress and the district court's sentencing determination, but we reject his arguments and affirm his conviction and sentence.

I. BACKGROUND

Defendant Skaggs is an Indiana resident who was initially investigated for his alleged involvement in child sex tourism. In late 2015, Special Agent Ryan Barrett received information about Skaggs's activities from the FBI's Violent Crimes Against Children Section, Major Case Coordination Unit. Barrett learned that Skaggs had been convicted of child molestation in 1997. Barrett also learned that the Major Case Coordination Unit had received tips that: Skaggs had contacted the tipster, an individual working in child services in Ukraine, to offer the assistance of Ukrainian Angels Resource Network, an organization Skaggs had apparently registered that purportedly helped orphans and at-risk children and teens in Ukraine; Skaggs's personal Facebook page showed photographs of teen and pre-teen girls who were scantily dressed or posed in a sexually suggestive way; Skaggs traveled regularly between Indiana and Ukraine; Skaggs may have had minor girls living with him at an orphanage in Ukraine; and a former coworker of Skaggs's had contacted the tipster via Facebook stating that Skaggs told him he has a sexual interest in minors and travels to Ukraine to have sex with girls. Agent Barrett knew, based on his training and experience, that "Ukrainian Angels" was the name of a well-known child pornography website.

Agent Barrett corroborated much of the information received from the Major Case Coordination Unit, including that: Skaggs had a 1997 conviction for sexual misconduct with a minor and was ordered to have no contact with the victim or any children under the age of 16, excluding his own children, while on probation; Skaggs frequently traveled overseas; Skaggs was the director of the Ukrainian Angels Resource Network, according to his LinkedIn profile; and Skaggs's Facebook profile contained several photographs of him with young boys and girls. Skaggs's social media also revealed that he had been involved with several other overseas orphanages, and Agent Barrett knew from his training and experience that it is common for sex offenders to be involved with child-related organizations to gain access to potential victims, including at-risk or vulnerable youth.

Given this information, Agent Barrett initiated an investigation of Skaggs in December 2015. Almost a year later, the FBI learned from another source that Skaggs planned to travel to Ukraine and intended to meet with fourteen-year-old girls. As a result of the information gathered in Agent Barrett's investigation, on December 10, 2016, Skaggs was searched and interviewed in the customs area of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport during his return trip from Ukraine to his home in Indiana.

At customs, Skaggs was referred to a secondary inspection area, where he was met by an officer from Customs and Border Protection ("CBP") and a special agent from Homeland Security Investigations ("HSI"), St. Paul Field Office. The agents heard him say, "I'm ready to get fucked" and "This happens to me all the time when I fly to the U.S." Still, Skaggs agreed to be interviewed and confirmed that his bags were his. When asked whether he had any electronic equipment in his luggage, Skaggs said no and remarked that everything of that sort had been stolen while he was in Ukraine. But when CBP officers searched Skaggs's luggage, they found four thumb drives wrapped in underwear located in his backpack. Those items, as well as an SD card and a cell phone, were taken to a different location in the airport for further inspection.

During his interview, Skaggs denied having child pornography on his thumb drives. But when an HSI computer forensics expert "previewed" the thumb drives (meaning that he made a quick examination of the media itself but did not make an image copy), he discovered several images on one of the thumb drives believed to be child erotica or pornography. All four thumb drives were seized for further analysis.

Two days after Skaggs's entry into the United States, another computer forensics expert continued the search of the thumb drives at the HSI-St. Paul Forensics Laboratory, located about two miles from the airport. Upon examination, he found suspected child pornography in the form of videos and screen captures of what appeared to be a nude teenage female using the toilet and shower. This individual was later identified to be Skaggs's daughter, who was around fourteen years old at the time the videos were taken.

Based on these findings, Agent Barrett obtained a search warrant to search the thumb drives for evidence of child pornography. Pursuant to the warrant, Barrett found numerous images and videos of child pornography and child erotica. These included video files and screen captures of Skaggs's daughter, sometimes completely nude, getting in and out of the shower and/or using the toilet. In two of the videos, the camera focused on the girl's exposed torso and breasts, and in another video, Skaggs's hand could be seen adjusting the camera to focus on the girl's genital area. Law enforcement soon learned that Skaggs's daughter and son lived with him on the weekends, following a divorce. The thumb drives also contained child pornography not involving Skaggs's daughter, as well as web and journal articles about pedophilia. The photos and videos were well-organized in a series of user-created folders on the thumb drives, with the videos and screenshots of his daughter in the bathroom saved in a folder titled "special video."

On January 9, 2017, law enforcement officials searched Skaggs's residence in Noblesville, Indiana, pursuant to a search warrant. When the officers arrived, Skaggs stated he had been "kind of waiting" for them, presumably since his thumb drives were seized at the Minneapolis airport about a month earlier. After being advised of his Miranda rights, Skaggs was interviewed for about three hours. In discussing the thumb drives seized at the airport, he admitted to using hidden video equipment to secretly film his daughter while she was nude in the bathroom, as well as collecting and possessing other child pornography files. He estimated that he had made seven or eight videos of his daughter getting in and out of the shower and confirmed that she was fourteen years old at the time he took the videos. Skaggs informed the agents that his "target age" and "sexual preference" with respect to young girls was "probably somewhere in the ballpark of 14," but maintained that he no longer had a sexual interest and instead placed the hidden camera in the bathroom out of curiosity and because he was a voyeur.

Skaggs was arrested that same day and detained pending trial. Several months later, in May 2017, Skaggs called his son, Tyler Skaggs, from the detention center and asked him to visit because he wanted Tyler to "do something" for him. Tyler visited his dad at the jail, sitting on the other side of a glass divider and speaking over a telephone. Skaggs held a handwritten note against the glass, hiding it whenever a guard walked by. The note asked Tyler to verify that a hard drive "still exists in [the] laundry room," specifically "in the ceiling tiles above those stacked bricks," and instructed Tyler to leave the hard drive in its place. Tyler returned home and checked the spot in the shared laundry room of Skaggs's apartment complex. He found the hard drive, left it in its hiding spot, and told his dad.

Jail officials reviewed a surveillance video of Tyler's visit and observed Skaggs placing a piece of paper up to the window for Tyler to read. Consequently, a search was conducted of Skaggs's cell where a letter was uncovered from his property bag that appeared to be the paper he had shown Tyler. Law enforcement then searched the laundry room and found the hard drive in the exact location described in Skaggs's note.

An agent's search of the hard drive revealed backup copies of many of the same videos of child pornography that agents had found on Skaggs's thumb drives. The agent also uncovered data indicating that Skaggs had searched the internet using terms such as "Lolita," "pedo," "incest," "preteen," and "underage." The agent was able to determine that Skaggs loaded the files onto the hard drive on December 11, 2016—the day after agents seized his thumb drives at the Minneapolis airport. Skaggs later admitted that he had purchased the hard drive the day after he returned to Indiana from Ukraine and that, over the next few days, he backed up files from his home computer, including personal business records and financial information, onto the hard drive. He also admitted that he hid the hard drive in the shared laundry room of his apartment complex because he believed it was likely that law enforcement would...