United States v. Williams

── United States v. Williams ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Date: April 13, 2026 Category: General FOR PUBLICATION UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 24-5792 D.C. No. Plaintiff - Appellee, 2:23-cr-00024- TOR-1 v. KOBY DON WILLIAMS, AKA Troy, OPINION Defendant - Appellant. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Washington Thomas O. Rice, District Judge, Presiding Argued and Submitted November 20, 2025 Seattle, Washington Filed April 13, 2026 Before: M. Margaret McKeown, Richard A. Paez, and Roopali H. Desai, Circuit Judges. Opinion by Judge McKeown 2 USA V. WILLIAMS SUMMARY * Criminal Law The panel affirmed Koby Don Williams’s conviction for attempted online enticement of a minor in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b), vacated his sentence, and remanded for resentencing. Williams was a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who falsely claimed, after his arrest, that he was conducting a human trafficking investigation. Williams challenged the sufficiency of the evidence to support his conviction. The panel concluded that a rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime of attempted enticement beyond a reasonable doubt, including the contested element of knowing persuasion, inducement, enticement, or coercion. • This conclusion is not undermined by the fact that, according to Williams, he repeatedly told “Rebecca”—a fictional online persona in an undercover operation that involved decoy posts featuring underage girls on social media platforms or websites—that he did not believe her when she told him that she was a minor. A reasonable jury was entitled to reject this testimony. * This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.  USA V. WILLIAMS 3 • A reasonable jury could also find that Williams’s conduct constituted a “substantial step” toward completing the crime, as required for a Section 2422(b) attempt conviction. • The panel rejected Williams’s argument that Section 2422(b) required the government to show that he attempted to “transform or overcome the will of a minor.” The jury needed only to find that Williams knowingly attempted to persuade, induce, entice, or coerce “Rebecca” to engage in sexual acts with him, and not that “Rebecca” had any particular mental state, which Williams transformed or overcame. Even if Section 2422(b) invariably required proof that the defendant attempted to transform or overcome a minor’s will, Williams unmistakably made that attempt. Williams contended for the first time on appeal that the government’s failure to produce a “missing published decoy advertisement” denied him his right to present a defense because that advertisement was exculpatory and material under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), and California v. Trombetta, 467 U.S. 479 (1984). The panel identified no viable Brady claim regarding either of two posts. Reviewing for plain error, the panel concluded that Williams did not demonstrate that the denial of his Brady claim would affect his substantial rights. Overruling Williams’s objections at sentencing, the district court adopted without change the presentence 4 US