United States v. Russell

Convicted of producing sexually explicit photographs of his minor daughters which later crossed international boundaries, (18 U.S.C. 2251(a)), defendant was sentenced to a prison term of 38 years. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. The district court properly allowed one of defendant's daughters to testify that he had touched her inappropriately one to two years before he took the photographs charged in this case and excluded from evidence a number of photography books from his collection containing photographs of nude families and children, as well as the proffered testimony of an expert concerning the practice of nudism. The court also upheld the judge's instruction to the jury that evidence of a defendant's flight from prosecution could be considered as evidence of his consciousness of guilt. The sentence was reasonable.