U.S. v. Hampton, 00-3157

• Citation: 260 F.3d 832
• Decision Date: 14 May 2001
• Docket Number: No. 00-3157,00-3157
• Parties: (8th Cir. 2001) UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, APPELLEE, v. WILLIAM DOUGLAS HAMPTON, APPELLANT. Submitted:
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

Page 832

260 F.3d 832 (8th Cir. 2001)

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, APPELLEE, v. WILLIAM DOUGLAS HAMPTON, APPELLANT.

No. 00-3157

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

Submitted: May 14, 2001

Filed: August 1, 2001

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.

Before Wollman, Chief Judge, Hansen, Circuit Judge, and Schreier,¹ District Judge.

Wollman, Chief Judge

William Hampton appeals his conviction and sentence for four counts of production of child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2251(a) and one count of possession of child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(4)(B). We affirm.

I.

But for the chance intervention of a thief, Hampton's sexual abuse and production of child pornography might well have gone unnoticed and unpunished. In September of 1999, Hampton's home was burglarized and his video camera stolen. The burglar was arrested shortly thereafter on other charges and instructed his mother to sell the camera to raise bail. Inside the camera, its purchaser found a videotaped recording of Hampton sexually abusing a young girl. The purchaser turned the tape over to police, the burglar's mother elicited the address of the burgled house from her son, and the police determined that Hampton, its sole inhabitant, was the man on the tape by comparing it to his driver's license and Department of Revenue photos.

Intending to arrest Hampton, the police knocked on the glass storm door that opened onto a porch at the front of Hampton's home. Hampton answered, leaving the front door open behind him and holding the storm door open while he spoke with police. The police identified themselves and inquired whether he was William Hampton. He denied being William Hampton and said that his name was Stephen Hampton. When the police asked him for identification, he told them that it was inside the house and held the door open to admit them. In the house, he handed over his own identification and admitted that he was William Hampton, whereupon the police informed him that he was under arrest. Hampton then asked to be allowed to secure his home before being taken into custody, and an officer accompanied him while he put away some items and locked the house. While inside the home, the officers observed rooms and items that were shown on the videotape. Because the house also contained children's toys, they inquired whether there were children in the house. Hampton told them that there were not and that the toys were present because he was a "surrogate father" to a four-year-old child. The items the police saw in Hampton's home became the basis for a search warrant that, when executed, led to the discovery of the evidence against Hampton, most notably ten separate tapes documenting his sexual abuse of a four-year-old girl who spent one night a week with Hampton. The police found no evidence that Hampton had distributed or intended to distribute the tapes, and no other child pornography was found in his home.

Hampton pled guilty to four counts of production of child pornography and one count of possession of child pornography. The district court² sentenced him to concurrent 240-month terms of imprisonment on counts one, three and four of the indictment (production), an additional concurrent term of 60 months on count five (possession), and a consecutive term of 53 months on count two (production): in total, 293 months in prison, followed by 3 years of supervised release, and a $500 fine.

II.

Hampton contests the constitutionality of the federal statute, the validity of the search warrant predicated on information obtained incidental to his arrest, and the district court's sentencing determinations.

A. Constitutionality of the Statute

Federal jurisdiction over Hampton's crimes derives from the portions of §§ 2251(a) and 2252(a)(4)(B) that criminalize the production and possession of child pornography using materials transported in interstate commerce. Hampton concedes that the videotapes on which he recorded his actions were manufactured outside the state of Missouri. Thus, Hampton, in producing and possessing the tapes, committed federal crimes even though all of his actions took place within Missouri. He contends that, in criminalizing his intrastate conduct, Congress overstepped the constitutional authority granted it by the interstate commerce clause, and that there is therefore no federal jurisdiction over his case. We disagree.

Section 2251(a) states, in relevant part: Any person who uses, persuades, induces, entices, or coerces any minor to engage in . . . any sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing any visual depiction of such conduct, shall be punished . . . if the visual depiction was produced using materials that have been mailed, shipped, or transported in interstate or foreign commerce by any means. . . .

Section 2252(a)(4)(B) criminalizes knowing possession of such material.

Hampton acknowledges that we approved § 2252(a)(4)(B) as within Congress's commerce power in United States v. Bausch, 140 F.3d 739, 741 (8th Cir. 1998), but argues that Bausch is no longer good law in light of the Supreme Court's holdings in United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598 (2000), Jones v. United States, 529 U.S. 808 (2000), and United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995). Since those cases were decided, however, we have held that Bausch continues to control the constitutionality of federal criminalization of child pornography produced with materials that have traveled in interstate commerce and accordingly affirmed a conviction under § 2251(b). United States v. Hoggard, 254 F.3d 744, 746 (8th Cir.2001) (upholding conviction for intrastate conduct in permitting minor children to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing a visual depiction where the film and camera used to create the depiction had been transported in interstate commerce). Accordingly, Hampton's constitutional attack on the statute fails.

B. Validity of the Search Warrant

Hampton argues that his warrantless arrest in his home was in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and that therefore the evidence obtained pursuant to a search warrant based largely on the observations of police officers in his home to effect the arrest should have been excluded as fruits of the poisonous tree. In Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 576 (1980), the Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment, as incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment, "prohibits the police from making a warrantless and nonconsensual entry into a suspect's home in order to make a routine felony arrest." "While Payton did not deal with the issue of whether an initial consensual entry would justify a subsequent warrantless arrest, we have held that a valid and voluntary consent may be followed by a warrantless in-home arrest." United States v. Briley, 726 F.2d 1301, 1303 (8th Cir. 1984) (citing United States v. Shigemura, 682 F.2d 699, 706 (8th Cir. 1982) and United States v. Ruiz-Altschiller, 694 F.2d 1104, 1106-07 (8th Cir. 1982)). Accordingly, Hampton's arrest was constitutionally valid if he voluntarily and without coercion consented to the officers' entry into his home. See id. at 1304.

Whether Hampton voluntarily consented to the entry is a question of fact to be determined from all the circumstances, and the government bears the burden of showing that the consent was freely given. See id. In this case, not only is there a complete lack of evidence tending to show any use of force, coercion, or deception by police, but what evidence there is indicates that Hampton literally opened the door to admit them into his home. Because Hampton consented to the police entry, his arrest and the ensuing search were therefore valid.

C. Sentencing Considerations

The district court held extensive evidentiary hearings in the course of taking Hampton's guilty plea and...