United States v. Griffith

Griffith, age 52, pled guilty to receiving, distributing, and possessing child pornography (18 U.S.C. 2252A) and was sentenced to 240 months’ imprisonment. Griffith’s crimes included 477 photographs and 11 videos of unspecified length. All counts were alleged to have occurred during three months near the end of 2015. Each time Twitter detected child pornography on Griffith’s account, the company closed the account and reported the inappropriate activity. Griffith created more than 25 Twitter accounts during that three-month period in an attempt to thwart those efforts, directing his followers from one account to the next. The court noted that Griffith had amassed enough of a criminal history to be in Category V and had sexually abused a child under the age of 13--the conviction was too old to be counted as criminal history. Two women had orders of protection against Griffith because he threatened them. His PSR added two levels because the material involved a prepubescent minor; a five-level increase for distributing the pictures in exchange for non-pecuniary, valuable consideration; a four-level increase for material that depicted violence and sexual abuse or exploitation of a toddler. His guidelines range was 324-405 months. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, rejecting claims of procedural error in calculating the guidelines range and that his resulting sentence was substantively unreasonable. View "United States v. Griffith" on Justia Law