No. 23-1130

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Appellee,

v.

KEVIN MACVICAR,

Defendant, Appellant.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MAINE

[Hon. Lance E. Walker, U.S. District Judge]

Before

Kayatta, Selya, and Rikelman, Circuit Judges.

Hunter J. Tzovarras on brief for appellant. Darcie N. McElwee, United States Attorney, and Brian S. Kleinbord, Assistant United States Attorney, on brief for appellee.

March 15, 2024 SELYA, Circuit Judge. After defendant-appellant Kevin MacVicar entered a guilty plea to a single count of possession of child pornography, see 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(5)(B), the district court imposed a below-guidelines sentence. The defendant nonetheless complains that this seven-year sentence is both procedurally flawed and substantively unreasonable. We disagree — and, thus, we affirm the challenged sentence.

I

We briefly rehearse the relevant facts and travel of the case. Because the defendant's sentence follows a guilty plea, we draw the facts from the plea agreement, the presentence investigation report (PSI Report), and the transcript of the disposition hearing. See United States v. deJesús, 6 F.4th 141, 145 (1st Cir. 2021); United States v. Del Valle-Rodríguez, 761 F.3d 171, 173 (1st Cir. 2014).

In May of 2020, a federal agency — Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) — was investigating users of an instant messaging application in the San Francisco area. This application allows users to chat and exchange images and videos. HSI's concern was the distribution of child pornography on the platform. In particular, HSI agents had identified one user who employed the platform to upload pornographic images of children and traced the IP address for that user's account to a residence in Hampden,

- 2 - Maine. Subsequent investigation revealed that the defendant dwelled at that address.

On February 22, 2021, HSI agents conducted a traffic stop of the defendant on his way to work. The agents told the defendant that they had a search warrant for his residence and that they "hope[d]" to speak with him about their investigation. After agreeing to speak with the agents and giving them his cell phone (which was also a target of the warrant), the defendant admitted to using his account to upload child pornography onto the messaging application.

Later that day, the agents executed the search warrant at the defendant's residence. There, they seized twenty-five electronic storage devices. During a forensic investigation of these devices, the agents found over 1,000 photographs and 200 videos depicting child pornography, some of which dated back to 2012.

At his initial appearance, the defendant waived indictment and entered a guilty plea to a single charge — proffered through an information — of possession of child pornography. See 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(5)(B). The district court accepted his plea and ordered the preparation of a PSI Report.

In the PSI Report, the probation office set the base offense level (BOL) at eighteen. See USSG §2G2.2(a). It then recommended several enhancements to the BOL due to, inter alia,

- 3 - the ages of the minor victims depicted in the files, the graphic content of the files, and the number of files retrieved from the defendant's possession. After applying an acceptance-of- responsibility reduct