United States v. Terry Lee Gilbreath, 21-5550

Terry Gilbreath was charged with two counts of producing child pornography under 18 U.S.C. § 2251(a) for videos showing an eight-year-old (B.T.) engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
Law enforcement seized an LG cell phone, a Western Digital internal hard drive, and a Seagate external hard drive from Gilbreath’s home; each device bore trade inscriptions indicating foreign origin (China, Malaysia, Thailand).
Videos and stills from the devices matched Gilbreath’s bedroom and bathroom; metadata placed one still at GPS coordinates matching his house; a distinctive mark on the man’s hand in the videos matched Gilbreath’s hand.
Gilbreath sought to introduce evidence that B.T. previously accused her 13‑year‑old brother of inappropriate touching and that B.T.’s grandfather is a registered sex offender; the district court excluded those items (Rule 412 and Rule 403 grounds).
After conviction, Gilbreath appealed, arguing (1) insufficiency of the evidence on § 2251(a)’s interstate‑commerce element and (2) that exclusion of the proffered evidence violated his right to present a complete defense.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Sufficiency of evidence on §2251(a) interstate‑commerce element	United States: trade inscriptions plus witness testimony and lack of local manufacture evidence allow jury to infer devices traveled in interstate/foreign commerce; circumstantial proof is sufficient	Gilbreath: inscriptions alone are insufficient to prove provenance beyond a reasonable doubt; government needed direct proof of manufacture/commerce chain	Affirmed: circumstantial evidence (trade inscriptions, testimony, research) sufficed beyond a reasonable doubt; Lively precedent supports this approach
Exclusion of evidence about victim’s brother and grandfather (right to present a defense)	United States: evidence barred by Rule 412 or, alternatively, irrelevant and unduly prejudicial under Rule 403	Gilbreath: exclusion violated his Fifth Amendment right to present a complete defense because evidence could suggest alternative perpetrators	Affirmed: district court permissibly excluded as marginally probative, misleading, and prejudicial under Rule 403; any error was harmless given overwhelming inculpatory evidence

United States v. Lively, 852 F.3d 549 (6th Cir. 2017) (trade inscriptions on media can satisfy §2251(a) interstate‑commerce element via circumstantial evidence)
United States v. Kettles, 970 F.3d 637 (6th Cir. 2020) (scope of Rule 412 and evidentiary review standard)
Holmes v. South Carolina, 547 U.S. 319 (2006) (trial courts may exclude speculative, remote evidence pointing to alternate perpetrators)
In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358 (1970) (due process requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every element)
United States v. Hughes, 505 F.3d 578 (6th Cir. 2007) (circumstantial evidence can sustain a guilty verdict)
United States v. Burdulis, 753 F.3d 255 (1st Cir. 2014) (common sense unreliability of false foreign‑origin inscriptions supports inference of foreign manufacture)
United States v. Cleveland, 907 F.3d 423 (6th Cir. 2018) (harmless‑error framework for evidentiary rulings)