United States v. Charles Browne, Jr.

NOT PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
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No. 23-1925
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
v.
CHARLES F. BROWNE, JR.,
Appellant
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On Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of New Jersey
(D.C. No. 3:20-cr-00965-001)
District Judge: Honorable Michael A. Shipp
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Submitted Under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a)
on July 8, 2024
Before: BIBAS, FREEMAN, and RENDELL, Circuit Judges
(Filed: July 8, 2024)
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OPINION*
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BIBAS, Circuit Judge.
Charles Browne was convicted of possessing, soliciting, and receiving child pornogra-
phy as well as obstructing a federal investigation. Though he challenges two evidentiary
rulings, we will affirm his conviction.
* This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and, under I.O.P. 5.7, is not binding
precedent.
Charles’s Dropbox cloud-storage account, tied to his email address, held dozens of vid-
eos and images of child porn. That account also held his résumé and was created from his
former home address. A few hours after Dropbox disabled that account, a new one was
created from his workplace using another of his email addresses.
An FBI agent and a police officer questioned Charles about the child porn in the accounts.
He denied any knowledge of Dropbox or child porn. After they left, he took his iPad and
iPhone and threw them into a bay to destroy any evidence. But the FBI had a diver recover
the devices and extracted more than a thousand child-porn files from them.
At trial, the jury convicted on all counts. Charles unsuccessfully tried to blame his
brother, Scott, who visited his home weekly and used his iPad. He sought to introduce
emails that Scott had sent Charles’s defense counsel plus texts and statements by Scott to
Charles’s private investigator claiming responsibility for the child porn. The District Court
excluded this hearsay as untrustworthy and not clearly against Scott’s penal interest. It also
admitted a statement in Charles’s pretrial brief denying all the government’s allegations,
contradicting Charles’s later admission that he had obstructed the investigation. We review
both evidentiary rulings for abuse of discretion. United States v. Caldwell, 760 F.3d 267,
289 (3d Cir. 2014); United States v. Bansal, 663 F.3d 634, 666 (3d Cir. 2011).
The District Court properly excluded Scott’s out-of-court statements as hearsay. To
admit them as statements against interest, the court would have had to find both that (A) a
reasonable person in Scott’s position would not have said them unless they were true be-
cause they tended to expose him to criminal liability and (B) circumstances clearly confirm
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that the statements were trustworthy. Fed. R. Evid. 804(b)(3). So if either prong is not met,
the statements are inadmissible hearsay.
Because the statements were untrustworthy, the second prong is not satisfied. Scott is
Charles’s brother and was looking for ways to help him out. He did not make these state-
ments until several years after Charles’s arrest, and he had been drinking. Then he changed
his story the next day, deflecting blame to a Bangladeshi hacker. So the District Court rea-
sonably found that Charles had not borne his burden of showing trustworthiness.
Charles also challenges the District Court’s admission of his pretrial brief denying all
the allegations, which the government argues it offered solely for impeachment purposes
after Charles admitted guilt on the obstruction charge. Even if that was error, it was harm-
less. The evidence against Charles was overwhelming. His Dropbox accounts, iPhone, and
iPad were full of child pornography. The Dropbox accounts used two of his email addresses
and held his résumé. He admitted throwing both devices into the bay to destroy them,
showing consciousness of guilt. Those devices and accounts were used regularly not only
at Charles’s home, but also at the crematorium where he worked, which Scott was unlikely
to visit. Given this overwhelming evidence, any dispute about whether Charles at first denied
obstructing the investigation did not affect the outcome of his trial. We will thus affirm.
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