United States v. Christie

• Decision Date: 11 June 2013
• Docket Number: Nos. 11–2106,11–2221.,s. 11–2106
• Citation: 717 F.3d 1156
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee/Cross–Appellant, v. Rebecca CHRISTIE, Defendant–Appellant/Cross–Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit

717 F.3d 1156

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee/Cross–Appellant,

v.Rebecca CHRISTIE, Defendant–Appellant/Cross–Appellee.

Nos. 11–2106, 11–2221.

United States Court of Appeals,Tenth Circuit.

June 11, 2013.

Barbara A. Mandel, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Office of the Federal Public Defender for the District of New Mexico, Las Cruces, New Mexico, for Defendant–Appellant/Cross–Appellee.

Laura Fashing, Assistant United States Attorney (Kenneth J. Gonzales, United States Attorney, with her on the briefs), Office of the United States Attorney, District of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, for Plaintiff–Appellee/Cross–Appellant.

Before BRISCOE, Chief Judge, McKAY and GORSUCH, Circuit Judges.

GORSUCH, Circuit Judge.

For Rebecca Christie, life must have seemed more virtual than real. She usually awoke around noon, settled in before her computer, and logged on to World of Warcraft for gaming sessions lasting well past midnight. There she assumed a new identity in a fantastical world filled with dragons and demons where players staged heroic adventures with and against other players. All the while back in the real world Ms. Christie ignored the needs of her three-year-old daughter. The neglect didn't prove fatal so long as Ms. Christie's husband was around to provide some care. But nine days after her husband left for an out-of-state deployment, the child was dead from dehydration.

Appealing second-degree murder and child abuse convictions, Ms. Christie raises significant questions about computer searches under the Fourth Amendment and the exclusion of witnesses from trial under the Sixth Amendment. The government's cross-appeal raises important questions, too, touching on the Assimilative Crimes Act and the Fifth Amendment's double jeopardy guarantee. In the end, however, we think the district court handled all these questions well and carefully and we see no grounds on which we might reverse its judgment in this tragic case.

I

Ms. Christie's child began life a healthy baby girl. But by twenty-one months, something appeared badly wrong. She plummeted to the bottom fifth percentile in weight for her age and began suffering from chronic diarrhea. A pediatrician prescribed PediaSure, a nutritional drink that helps children gain weight. That seemed to do the trick: the diarrhea soon stopped and BW (the district court and parties refer to the child by her initials) began gaining weight. By all appearances, she had turned a corner.

But even the best cure won't work if it isn't administered. And it seems Ms. Christie and her then-husband Derek Wulf, himself a zealous gamer, weren't up to the job. For her part, Ms. Christie would put BW to bed each night around 10 p.m., shut BW's door, and failed to retrieve the child until noon or later the following day. Because BW couldn't open the door herself, Ms. Christie effectively locked the child away without food or water for fourteen or more hours a day. Even when BW was free to seek food and water it appears little was available to her. Ms. Christie let slip to investigators that the child was always hungry and would sometimes try to eat the food she left out for the family cats. Ms. Christie's step-daughter (who visited on occasion) testified that Ms. Christie often wouldn't feed her or BW until noon and that BW's obvious hunger drove her to share her own food with BW.

Eventually, Mr. Wulf faced a deployment on the other side of the country. With the little care he provided BW now gone with him and the child's fate entirely in Ms. Christie's hands, the child was in trouble. Already badly malnourished, she succumbed to dehydration in nine days. An autopsy revealed that no inborn disorder was to blame. BW simply died from being ignored.

Medical experts testified that BW's desperate condition in the days before her death would have been blindingly clear. BW would have sought out water as a survival instinct. When that failed, she would have become lethargic and, on the day before her death, too weak to move. Her diapers wouldn't have needed changing. She would have had sticky saliva and then no saliva at all. She would have developed cracked lips, sunken eyes, and a sunken abdomen.

First responders confirmed that this is exactly what they saw when they found the child. They testified that BW's lips were cracked and blue, her eyes glassy, and her eyelids so dry they couldn't close. They said bones protruded from her body and her gums had turned black.

Because BW died on an Air Force base, federal authorities bore the responsibility to investigate and the power to prosecute. They proceeded against Ms. Christie and Mr. Wulf separately. In our proceeding, a federal jury found Ms. Christie guilty of second-degree murder, two assimilated state law homicide charges, as well as an assimilated child abuse charge. After trial, the district court dismissed the two assimilated homicide charges and entered a twenty-five year sentence on the remaining second-degree federal murder and the assimilated child abuse charge.

It is this judgment both sides now appeal.

II

Much of the evidence presented at trial against Ms. Christie came from the computer she so prized. From their forensic analysis, FBI investigators learned that Ms. Christie's online activities usually kept her busy from noon to 3 a.m. with little pause. They learned that she was in a chat room only an hour before finding BW near death, and that she was back online soon afterwards. They learned from Ms. Christie's messages to other gamers that she was annoyed by her responsibilities as a mother and “want[ed] out of this house fast.” When Mr. Wulf was slated for deployment, she announced to online friends that she would soon be free to “effing party.”

Ms. Christie contends this evidence and more from her computer was uncovered in violation of her Fourth Amendment rights and the district court should have suppressedit from her trial. Because the court didn't, because it admitted the proof against her, Ms. Christie says a new trial is required. To be precise, Ms. Christie doesn't question whether the government's seizure of the computer satisfied the Fourth Amendment. The government took possession of the computer in May 2006 with Mr. Wulf's consent. Everyone accepts that he was at least a co-owner of the computer—it was a gift from his father—and everyone accepts he had at least apparent authority to relinquish its control. Instead, Ms. Christie attacks the propriety of the two searches the government undertook once it had control of the computer. To justify its searches the government does not seek to rely on Mr. Wulf's consent but points to a pair of warrants it sought and received, one for each search. It is these warrants Ms. Christie challenges, arguing they were issued in defiance of the Fourth Amendment.

A

The first warrant came in October 2006, some five months after authorities seized the computer. Ms. Christie argues this investigative delay—between seizure and search—was constitutionally impermissible, should have precluded any warrant from issuing, and itself requires the suppression of everything the government found.

We do not doubt that an unreasonable delay in obtaining a search warrant can sometimes violate the Fourth Amendment. This much surely flows from the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. What, after all, is “reasonable” about police seizing an individual's property on the ground that it potentially contains relevant evidence and then simply neglecting for months or years to search that property to determine whether it really does hold relevant evidence needed for trial or is totally irrelevant to the investigation and should be returned to its rightful owner? See, e.g., United States v. Burgard, 675 F.3d 1029, 1033 (7th Cir.2012); United States v. Laist, 702 F.3d 608, 613–14 (11th Cir.2012); United States v. Martin, 157 F.3d 46, 54 (2d Cir.1998); United States v. Respress, 9 F.3d 483, 488 (6th Cir.1993).

In assessing the reasonableness of a delay in seeking a warrant, however, we must take account of “the totality of the circumstances” in each case as it comes to us, United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 8, 109 S.Ct. 1581, 104 L.Ed.2d 1 (1989), wary of the temptation to impose “rigid rules, bright-line tests, and mechanistic inquiries,” Florida v. Harris, –––U.S. ––––, 133 S.Ct. 1050, 1055, 185 L.Ed.2d 61 (2013). What reasonably justifies a brief delay, for example, may not reasonably justify a longer one. Our task in each case is to “balance the nature and quality of the intrusion on the individual's Fourth Amendment interests against the importance of the governmental interests alleged to justify the intrusion.” United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696, 703, 103 S.Ct. 2637, 77 L.Ed.2d 110 (1983).

Looking first to Ms. Christie's side of the ledger, it's hard to see a significant invasion of her Fourth Amendment interests flowing from the government's delay. That's not to say she never had an interest in the computer. Far from it. She was its primary user and she stored a great deal of personal data on the computer. We don't question that is enough to establish some possessory and privacy interest in the computer the Fourth Amendment would recognize and protect. See United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113, 104 S.Ct. 1652, 80 L.Ed.2d 85 (1984); United States v. Angevine, 281 F.3d 1130, 1133–34 (10th Cir.2002).

The difficulty Ms. Christie faces comes from her husband's actions and her own inactions. The fact is Mr. Wulf was at least a co-owner of the computer, he consented to its seizure, and Ms. Christie herself raised no objection to the seizure either at the time or in the following weeks and months. No call to the authorities, no letter, no motion to the court. Put differently, one individual with common and at least apparent authority over the computer freely gave it to authorities and the other individual never...