United States v. Ross

── United States v. Ross ── Case No.: 24-1907 Court: Court of Appeals for the First Circuit Date: April 02, 2026 Category: General United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit No. 24-1907 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Appellee, v. KEVIN LEE ROSS, Defendant, Appellant. APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MAINE [Hon. John A. Woodcock, Jr., U.S. District Judge] Before Montecalvo, Thompson, and Aframe, Circuit Judges. William L. Welch, III for appellant. Lindsay B. Feinberg, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Craig M. Wolff, Acting United States Attorney, was on brief, for appellee. April 2, 2026  THOMPSON, Circuit Judge. A jury in the United States District Court for the District of Maine convicted Kevin Lee Ross of one count of possessing child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(5)(B). Ross now seeks to undo his conviction, raising dual challenges to the district court's evidentiary determinations at trial -- both of which he premises on a joint stipulation (that we explain in detail below) between himself and the government. His grievances take aim at the district court's assessment under Federal Rule of Evidence 403, in which, despite the joint stipulation, the court (1) allowed the government to introduce and publish exhibits, the contents of which Ross had already stipulated to, and (2) allowed an agent who contributed to the investigation to describe the exhibits once admitted. All in all, we find that the district court did not err in allowing either evidentiary admission, and consequentially, we affirm. Read on to see our reasoning. Background To the reader's benefit, we briefly recite the facts of the case, first summing up the highlights of a conviction Ross sustained in 2014 and continuing on to his trial and second conviction before us now. Because this case involves a claim of prejudicial evidentiary error, we'll provide a "balanced" rendition of the facts. See United States v. Burgos-Montes, 786 F.3d 92, 99 (1st Cir. 2015) (quoting United States v. Felton, 417 - 2 - F.3d 97, 99 (1st Cir. 2005)). We reserve additional "details for our . . . discussion of specific issues." United States v. Montoya, 844 F.3d 63, 66 (1st Cir. 2016). A. Ross's First Conviction Back in 2014, a jury in the District of Maine convicted Ross of one count of possessing child pornography, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(5)(B). See United States v. Ross ("Ross I"), 837 F.3d 85, 87 (1st Cir. 2016). Ross was sentenced to a ninety-month term (totaling seven and a half years) of imprisonment and, upon his release, a five-year term of supervised release. He remained in prison until 2021 and began his term of supervision thereafter. Among his conditions of supervised release were a restriction on Ross's access to the internet, monitored usage of his internet-capable devices and storage media, and a requirement that he submit to random searches of his devices by the United States Probation Office ("Probation"). Probation found Ross compliant with these conditions in fourteen routine inspections between 2021 and 2023. Things seemed to be going well, but that changed dramatically. During his supervised release term, in February of 2023, Ross lived with his two brothers, Mike and Scott, in Penobscot, Maine. But a fire in the basement of their home forced the trio to relocate. Initially, they wound up residing in a cottage in the same town, but eventually (around late March or