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.
161027P.pdf   03/31/2017  United States  v.  James Needham
   U.S. Court of Appeals Case No:  16-1027
   U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota - St. Paul   
   [PUBLISHED] [Smith, Author, with Loken and Colloton, Circuit Judges] 
   Criminal case - Criminal law. No error in admitting screenshots of a web 
   site as the government agent testified he was familiar with the online 
   content and that the exhibits were in the same format as the online 
   content; the screenshots did not constitute inadmissible hearsay; no error 
   in admission of the government's chart containing information gathered 
   from uploaded images; no error in rejecting defendant's proposed 
   instruction defining "distribute" in this prosecution for distribution of 
   child pornography as the district court need not define terms of ordinary 
   meaning and the instructions given fairly and adequately instructed the 
   jury on the applicable law; a juror's mere distant past acquaintance with 
   an attorney's relative does not qualify as the type of egregious or 
   extreme situation in which juror bias may be implied or presumed, and 
   there was no actual evidence of juror bias such as would require a new 
   trial. 
  
162394U.pdf   03/31/2017  United States  v.  Nicholas Tensley
   U.S. Court of Appeals Case No:  16-2394
   U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas - Little Rock   
   [UNPUBLISHED] [Per Curiam - Before Colloton, Gruender and Kelly, Circuit 
   Judges] 
   Criminal case - Sentencing. Where the district court recognized its 
   authority to depart downward under Guidelines Sec. 4A1.3 and declined to 
   do so, its discretionary decision not to depart is unreviewable; the 
   court's decision to vary upwards 7 months from the top of the advisory 
   range was not an abuse of discretion as the court appropriately considered 
   and weighed the Sec. 3553(a) factors, including defendant's history and 
   personal characteristics, such as military service, as well as the 
   seriousness of the offense conduct.