United States v. Carl Tisthammer

MEMORANDUM

Carl Tisthammer appeals his conviction, following a jury trial, of three counts of production of child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2251 (b), (e); four counts of receipt of child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252 (a)(2)(A), (b)(1); and one count of possession of child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(5)(B), (b)(2). Tisthammer now objects, for the first time, to several evi-dentiary determinations made at trial; he also objects to the district court’s use of a prior California state conviction to enhance his sentence. Because the facts are known to the parties, we recount them here only as necessary to explain our decision. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 , and we affirm.

At the outset, we note that because Tisthammer did not preserve any of these issues for appeal by objecting at trial, we now review the district court’s rulings for plain error. To warrant reversal, the district court must have committed (1) error (2) that was plain and (3) affected Tistham-mer’s substantial rights. Puckett v. United States, 556 U.S. 129, 135 , 129 S.Ct. 1423 , 173 L.Ed.2d 266 (2009). We then have discretion to correct the district…