DISCLAIMER: The following unofficial case summaries are prepared by the clerk's office
as a courtesy to the reader. They are not part of the opinion of the court.
153211P.pdf 11/18/2016 United States v. Roxanne Merrell
U.S. Court of Appeals Case No: 15-3211
U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota - St. Paul
[PUBLISHED] [Murphy, Author, with Gruender and Shepherd, Circuit Judges]
Criminal case - Criminal law and sentencing. The search warrant specified
that law enforcement officers could search defendant and create
photographs of her hands and the photography process used did not exceed
the Fourth Amendment's bounds of reasonableness; any error in admitting a
law enforcement officer's expert testimony that the hands shown in a child
pornography image were defendant's was harmless in light of the
overwhelming evidence in the case, including defendant's confession that
the hands were hers; district court did not abuse its discretion in
refusing to admit a videotape interview of the minor victim, as any
probative value the tape may have had was substantially outweighed by its
potential to confuse the issues; district court did not err in using the
Eighth Circuit Model Instruction on lascivious exhibition; district court
adequately considered the 35553(a) factors at sentencing and did not
impose an unreasonable sentence.