Background
David Greulich met a 14-year-old girl on Snapchat and knew her age. In April and May 2024, he traveled from Ohio to New York, sexually abused her, and recorded the abuse. A later search uncovered child pornography on his devices and Google account, including recordings of the abuse. Greulich also admitted emailing child pornography in July 2023.
Greulich pleaded guilty without a plea agreement to seven production, travel, transportation, and possession offenses. The district court adopted a total offense level of 46, treated as 43 under the Guidelines, and calculated a Guidelines sentence of 2,040 months because no individual count authorized life imprisonment. After considering the statutory sentencing factors, the court imposed 360 months and stated that it would impose the same sentence even if it accepted all of Greulich’s Guidelines arguments.
The Court’s Holding
The Sixth Circuit affirmed without deciding whether the district court improperly grouped the production and travel counts or improperly applied the production-guideline cross-reference to the travel counts. Under Greulich’s own proposed grouping and cross-reference analysis, the combined offense level remained 44 before acceptance of responsibility and application of the five-level pattern-of-sex-crimes enhancement.
Greulich abandoned any challenge to that enhancement by omitting it from his appellate briefs, despite having objected below. The court also concluded that the enhancement applied because at least one offense was a covered sex crime and Greulich’s sexual conduct with the minor during two separate trips established the required pattern. Adding the enhancement to Greulich’s proposed calculation produced the same total offense level and Guidelines sentence used by the district court, so any grouping or cross-reference error was harmless.
Key Takeaways
- An alleged Guidelines error is harmless when correcting it would not change the applicable Guidelines calculation.
- A sentencing objection raised in the district court is abandoned when the appellant omits it from both the opening and reply briefs.
- Separate instances of prohibited sexual conduct with a minor can establish the pattern required for the five-level enhancement under U.S.S.G. § 4B1.5(b)(1).
Why It Matters
The decision illustrates that defendants must account for every operative enhancement when arguing that a different grouping or cross-reference analysis would lower their Guidelines exposure. If an unchallenged enhancement independently restores the same offense level, an appellate court may affirm without resolving the disputed Guidelines questions.