United States v. Bindues

Appellate Case: 24-2117 Document: 58-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 1 FILED United States Court of Appeals UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS Tenth Circuit FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT November 5, 2026 _________________________________ Christopher M. Wolpert Clerk of Court UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. No. 24-2117 (D.C. No. 1:22-CR-00466-JB-1) JOHNATHON BINDUES, (D.N.M.) Defendant - Appellant. _________________________________ ORDER AND JUDGMENT * _________________________________ Before HARTZ, McHUGH, and EID, Circuit Judges. _________________________________ In May 2023, a jury convicted Johnathon Bindues, a former high school girls’ athletic coach, of coercing and enticing fourteen-year-old Jane Doe to engage in sexual activity in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b), and of persuading or enticing Doe to produce child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2251. The United States District Court for the District of New Mexico sentenced Bindues to 276 months’ imprisonment and ten years’ supervised release. Bindues challenges his convictions and argues that the record contains insufficient evidence to support his conviction * This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It may be cited, however, for its persuasive value consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1.  Appellate Case: 24-2117 Document: 58-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 2 under § 2251 and that the district court abused its discretion when it permitted the government’s expert witness to testify. We disagree. To the contrary, the record contains sufficient evidence to support Bindues’s conviction under § 2251, and the district court did not abuse its discretion when it admitted the challenged expert testimony. Exercising our jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 3742 and 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm. I. From September 2020 to June 2021, Johnathon Bindues and Jane Doe exchanged more than 17,000 text messages, in which the two had countless inappropriate conversations and exchanged explicit images. During this same time, and on multiple occasions, Bindues had sex with Doe. Bindues was thirty years old, and Doe was fourteen. 1 We have reviewed the record in full. It contains far too many instances of inappropriate, graphic, and/or sexual exchanges between Bindues and Doe for us to catalog them all here. Even still, the facts recounted in this Order and Judgment more than support our holding. A. Doe first met Bindues when she was in the eighth grade. Doe was thirteen years old, and Bindues was her basketball coach. In 2020, Doe began her freshman 1 Doe turned fifteen in April 2021. 2  Appellate Case: 24-2117 Document: 58-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 3 year and joined her high school’s basketball and track teams. Bindues coached both teams. Around this time, Bindues and Doe began to exchange text messages. Doe “trusted” Bindues and “felt like he was one of the only people” who understood her. R. Vol. IV at 726. She confided in him and even told him that she was unhappy at home and felt unsafe there. Doe testified that she “like[d],” “admire[d],” and “felt comfortable around” Bindues. Id. at 564, 566. But as their text messages reveal, Bindues and Doe’s relationship quickly became intimate. The two texted frequently—mostly at night—about Doe’s life, basketball, and often “inappropriate things.” Id. at 563. They called each other “fiancée.” Id. at 577. They set a future wedding date—November 9, 2030—because the fourteen- year-old Doe was too young to get married. They discussed having children together. Bindues called Doe a host of nicknames, ranging from “bum” and “brat” to “wifey,” “[his] main hoe,” and “sugar lips.” Id. at 570, 634, 666–67, 670, 673. And Bindues encouraged Doe to come up with nicknames for him. In April 2021, in the late-night hours of Doe’s fifteenth birthday, Bindues and Doe’s relationship became more explicit. As the two were texting, Doe began to probe Bindues about their relationship. Doe asked Bindues if he meant any of the compliments he often directed towards her, and Bindues replied that he meant them but that “certain things can’t be in text.” Id. at 705. A few messages later, Bindues also told Doe, “if someone were to see our convos they’d probably have a problem.” Id. at 710. 3  Appellate Case: 24-2117 Document: 58-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 4 At around 2:30 a.m., Bindues told Doe that he feared “taking advantage of [her] vulnerability,” and asked her if she had ever “‘shared things’ before,” which Doe understood as Bindues asking if she had ever had sex. Id. at 739–40. When Doe answered in the negative and expressed embarrassment about the subject, Bindues texted back and said that he did not think Doe was “immature for never having sex” and he was “proud” of her. Id. at 740. Bindues then told Doe to “please make sure to delete all of this,” id. at 740—a recurrent request that Doe regularly obliged “to hide the things that [they] were talking about,” id. at 753. 2 After her birthday, Bindues and Doe’s conversations quickly became more graphic. They now talked about kissing, sex, and each other’s sexual fantasies. At one point, Bindues proposed that he and Doe have a threesome and asked what other experiences Doe was “open to.” Id. at 798–99. At another point, Doe expressed a desire to have oral sex with Bindues, who in turn expressed his desire to “look down on [Doe] with [her] mouth full.” Id. at 894. And at yet another point, Bindues told Doe that her “[p]*ssy’s gonna be tested for taste . . . [a]nd entered to test for feel.” Id. at 773. Bindues’s actions, however, would not remain solely in their texts. Over time, Bindues increasingly used his position as Doe’s coach to create opportunities for the two to have sex. On one occasion, Bindues arranged for Doe to join him on a school-affiliated sports trip that Doe had no reason to attend. They 2 On other occasions, Bindues encouraged Doe to communicate with him through Snapchat, a social media and instant messaging application where messages disappear automatically. 4  Appellate Case: 24-2117 Document: 58-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 5 travelled by bus, and the trip took between four and five hours each way. Bindues sat next to Doe and, while the lights were off, touched her vagina and eventually guided her hand to touch his penis. Bindues also convinced Doe to join the track team to create “an even bigger opportunity for one on one” time. Id. at 891–92. On one occasion, Bindues kissed Doe at track practice despite the presence of other students. On another occasion, Bindues suggested that the two have a “private session” for Doe to improve her track skills. Id. at 891. But that was a ruse: Instead, the two met alone at the school on a Saturday, where they had oral and vaginal sex in an equipment closet. Another time, Bindues tried unsuccessfully to have vaginal sex with Doe in his car on the way to a basketball game. At least twice, Bindues had oral and vaginal sex with Doe at his house. Bindues also frequently encouraged Doe to text him explicit images. On one occasion, after discussing the size of Doe’s breasts, Bindues told her that “PG is for kids” and urged her to send him a picture. Id. at 794. When Doe texted back a clothed image of herself, Bindues responded, “Haha I had you sending non PG versions in mind.” Id. Eventually, Bindues’s requests became more emphatic. On April 20, 2021, Bindues texted Doe at 11:23 p.m., “Soooo do I get my sneak peek?” Id. at 828. Doe responded, “baby you need to tell me like at 10, when I’m not already in bed!” Id. Bindues replied, “Never too late,” with a shrug emoji. Id. But Doe refused— “pictures take longer than you think babe,” to which Bindues responded, “Guess I’ll 5  Appellate Case: 24-2117 Document: 58-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 6 just go without.” Id. Doe testified that she understood Bindues’s request for a “sneak peek” as a request for “nude pictures.” Id. at 829. Bindues would not always be so subtle—shortly thereafter on May 2, 2021, Bindues texted Doe, “Send nudes.” Id. at 864. On May 25, 2021, Doe texted Bindues and said, “it looks like I’m still wearing clothes even when I’m naked from my freaking track tan.” Id. at 920. Bindues responded, “haha doesn’t bother me . . . lemme see.” Id. Doe then invited Bindues to come to her house, but Bindues replied, “I can’t so show me.” Id. To that, Doe asked Bindues what he wanted to “be shown,” and Bindues replied, “All of it.” Id. Doe testified that she understood “[a]ll of it” to mean her body. Id. Doe then told Bindues that he could have “a sneak peak [sic].” Id. But Bindues protested—“F*ck a sneak peak [sic]! I want more baby.” Id. When Doe continued to refuse, Bindues complained, “D*mn you’re putting me on a reward system like a dog.” Id. Doe responded, “no, but i’d [sic] sure know how to roll over for you.” Id. “Roll over and give me what I want then,” Bindues replied. Id. at 921. Doe then said, “come tell me what to do and [I’ll] listen, youre [sic] the boss,” id., to which Bindues responded, “Okay, show me all of it.” Id. Again, Doe testified that she understood this to be a request for pictures of “the entirety of [her] body.” Id. And in addition to pictures, Bindues added that he would “definitely enjoy the f*ck out of a video.” Id. On June 11, 2021, as Bindues and Doe were texting about having sex, Doe said, “i [sic] would say watch me . . . But you don’t really have to when you’ll just be able to feel me.” Id. at 948. Bindues responded, “Still waiting to watch you though.” 6  Appellate Case: 24-2117 Document: 58-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 7 Id. At first, Doe thought Bindues meant that he wished to watch Doe while he penetrated her and she responded accordingly: “Oh ya my bad! I forgot you wanna [sic] see my reaction to just how good you’re giving it to me.” Id. But that was not what Bindues meant—“No, watch you with yourself,” he replied. Id. Doe testified that she then understood Bindues to mean that he wanted a video of Doe touching her vagina. But Doe did not send a video that night because she was “tired” and “ke[pt] dozing off.” Id. at 949. Bindues, apparently disappointed, responded to Doe, “Sorry, I just wanted to see her”—“her” being Doe’s vagina. Id. On June 12, 2021, Bindues asked if Doe was “able to call.” Id. at 952–53. Doe apparently did call, and the text messages exchanged immediately thereafter suggest that the call was sexual in nature. Doe texted Bindues, “So what were you saying, how much you wanna be in my p*ssy right now?” Id. at 953. Bindues responded, “Soooooo bad,” id., and asked, “You gonna show me?” with a smirking emoji, id. at 955, which Doe understood as Bindues asking to see her vagina. Doe asked Bindues if he could wait for her to take a shower before she sent him anything, and Bindues said that he could. Doe then asked Bindues, “so is [sic] there any requests,” and Bindues responded that he “want[ed] to be surprised.” Id. at 956. Doe then sent Bindues a video of her touching her vagina—the first of multiple explicit videos. Bindues responded enthusiastically, Doe responded, “oh, yea you want more baby,” and Bindues replied, “Yes please baby.” Id. at 956–57. Doe then sent an additional explicit video. Upon receiving the videos, Bindues replied “nice to finally see what’s mine.” Aple. Supp. R. Vol. II at 3025. He also 7  Appellate Case: 24-2117 Document: 58-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 8 told Doe that her “p*ssy is so f*cking nice” and that he wanted to “c*m” “right inside [her] sweet f*cking p*ssy.” R. Vol. IV at 962. Bindues later told Doe that he had kept the videos for a while and that he was “devastated” when he “finally deleted” them. Id. at 971. B. In early July 2021, Doe’s mother confiscated Doe’s cellphone after noticing Doe’s habit of texting late at night. As she did so, she saw Doe quickly delete text messages. While holding the cellphone, Doe’s mother noticed a new message appear from a contact saved as “one n only.” Doe’s mother assumed that “one n only” was one of Doe’s peers. The following morning, Doe’s mother confiscated Doe’s school- issued laptop and realized that Doe’s cellphone was paired to it. Because the devices were paired, Doe’s mother believed that the messages she saw Doe delete might still be on the laptop. Her intuition was correct: The deleted messages were still there. Doe’s mother read the messages and was shocked by their graphic content. Doe’s mother confronted Doe about the messages, and Doe initially claimed that “one n only” was an older boy from school. But when Doe’s mother noticed that “one n only” was in a group message for Doe’s track team, Doe admitted that “one n only” was Bindues. Doe’s mother contacted the police and turned over her daughter’s cellphone and laptop. Police then recovered the thousands of messages between Bindues and Doe and arrested Bindues on July 17, 2021. 8  Appellate Case: 24-2117 Document: 58-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 9 C. A federal grand jury in the District of New Mexico indicted Bindues for (1) coercion and enticement of a minor in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b); and (2) production of child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2251(a), (e), and 2256. At trial, Doe testified to the facts and text messages recounted above. The government presented numerous explicit images exchanged between Bindues and Doe. These images included pictures of Doe naked and of Bindues’s penis. The government also showed the jury the explicit videos that Doe had sent to Bindues. At trial, and over Bindues’s objection, the government called FBI Supervisory Special Agent Daniel O’Donnell as an expert on the subject of grooming. Agent O’Donnell works as the Unit Chief for the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit III, which investigates crimes against children. Agent O’Donnell testified as a “blind” witness, meaning that he did not review any evidence from the case before trial and did not offer his opinion as to whether Bindues had groomed Doe. During his testimony, Agent O’Donnell opined that grooming “is a dynamic process involving the constellation of behaviors that are designed to gain the cooperation of a child for the sexual gratification of an offender.” App’x Vol. IV at 493. Agent O’Donnell continued that “grooming itself is just, more or less, an overarching term that is often used to describe these clusters of behaviors that are commonly used by certain child sex offenders to engage a child in sexual activity.” Id. Agent O’Donnell further opined that a person has three goals when grooming a child: “to engage [the] child in sexual activity,” “to prevent discovery of that by 9  Appellate Case: 24-2117 Document: 58-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 10 people outside the child,” and “to prevent or delay disclosures of the sexual activity by the child.” Id. at 494. Agent O’Donnell also described what he called the “five stages” of grooming: (1) identifying a target child; (2) establishing a connection; (3) gathering information about the child; (4) fulfilling the child’s needs and exploiting the child’s vulnerabilities; and (5) lowering the child’s inhibitions. Agent O’Donnell testified that law enforcement use these stages “to help [ ] explain and understand the different clusters of behaviors” involved in grooming and that law enforcement does not view the stages of grooming as a necessarily “step-by-step process.” Id. at 495. Bindues called his own expert—forensic psychologist Dr. Simone Viljoen—to challenge Agent O’Donnell’s testimony. Dr. Viljoen testified that she conducted “a thorough literature review” and concluded that “there is no consensus as to how to define grooming.” Id. at 1303–05. Dr. Viljoen also opined that because “there is no reliable or valid way to measure grooming,” investigators “can’t tell whether [grooming has] happened, and [ ] cannot predict if it’s going to happen in the future.” Id. at 1305. At the conclusion of the four-day trial, the jury convicted Bindues on both counts. The district court sentenced Bindues to 276 months’ imprisonment, followed by ten years of supervised release. Bindues timely appealed. II. On appeal, Bindues raises two issues. First, Bindues argues that the record contains insufficient evidence to support his conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 2251. 10  Appellate Case: 24-2117 Document: 58-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 11 Second, Bindues argues that the district court abused its discretion when it permitted Agent O’Donnell’s expert testimony on grooming. We reject both arguments. A. Start with Bindues’s sufficiency challenge. “We review sufficiency of the evidence claims de novo,” CGC Holding Co. v. Hutchins, 874 F.3d 1201, 1209 (10th Cir. 2020), and examine “the entire record in the light most favorable to the government to determine whether the evidence is such that a reasonable jury could find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” United States v. Sapp, 53 F.3d 1100, 1103 (10th Cir. 1995) (quotation omitted). We will affirm if the evidence is such that “any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime . . . beyond a reasonable doubt.” United States v. Emmons, 24 F.3d 1210, 1217 (10th Cir. 1994) (quotation omitted). In conducting our review, we will not “second- guess the jury’s credibility determinations, nor [will] we reassess the jury’s conclusions about the weight of the evidence presented.” United States v. Smith, 133 F.3d 737, 742 (10th Cir. 1997) (quotation omitted). We begin our analysis with reference to the essential elements of the crime proscribed in 18 U.S.C. § 2251(a), Bindues’s statute of conviction. See Emmons, 24 F.3d at 1217. Section 2251 makes it illegal for a person to cause a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of creating a visual depiction of that conduct “if that visual depiction was produced or transmitted using materials that have been mailed, shipped, or transported in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer.” 18 U.S.C. § 2251(a). “Sexually 11  Appellate Case: 24-2117 Document: 58-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 12 explicit conduct” includes “masturbation” and the “lascivious exhibition of the anus, genitals, or pubic area.” Id. § 2256(2)(A). “Computer” as it is found in § 2251 includes cellphones. See id. § 2256(6). Bindues contends that we should vacate his conviction under § 2251 because “there [is] a total lack of evidence” that he encouraged Doe to send him the explicit videos. Aplt. Br. at 16. Bindues argues that he “did not specifically ask for Doe to produce sexually explicit depictions.” Id. To the contrary, Bindues maintains that Doe sent the videos “unprompted,” upon her own volition, and even offered to send Bindues more. Reply Br. at 6–7. We are wholly unpersuaded by Bindues’s arguments. The record utterly vitiates his assertions: It is simply beyond debate that Bindues repeatedly asked Doe for explicit images. See, e.g., R. Vol. IV at 794 (Bindues texts Doe that “PG is for kids,” Doe responds with a picture of herself wearing clothes, and Bindues replies, “Haha I had you sending non PG versions in mind.”); id. at 828 (Bindues texts Doe “Soooo do I get my sneak peek?”, Doe responds that she is already in bed and that “pictures take longer than [Bindues] think[s],” and Bindues responds that he will “just go without”); id. at 837 (Bindues texts Doe “Send nudes”); id. at 920 (Bindues texts Doe “F*ck a sneak peak! I want more baby”); id. at 920–21 (Doe texts Bindues, implies that she is naked, says to Bindues “tell me what to do and [I’ll] listen to you, youre [sic] the boss,” and Bindues responds “Okay, show me all of it.”). It would be one thing if Bindues pressed his sufficiency challenge by arguing that the government failed to meet its burden. But Bindues instead makes 12  Appellate Case: 24-2117 Document: 58-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 13 exculpatory claims about his conduct, which the record evidence refutes in toto. Take the following argument from Bindues’s reply brief: “Bindues simply did not ask Doe to produce a depiction of sexually explicit conduct, and asking for nude photographs is insufficient to support” his conviction under § 2251. Reply Br. at 4. This argument is both factually and legally frivolous. Bindues, in fact, repeatedly asked Doe for sexually explicit images. And while we have suggested that “[m]erely asking a minor for a naked photo” may not violate § 2251(a) under certain circumstances, United States v. Streett, 83 F.4th 842, 854 (10th Cir. 2023), Bindues’s behavior far exceeds any conduct countenanced by the statute or our prior decisions. After reviewing the entire record and construing all facts, evidence, and reasonable inferences in the government’s favor, we conclude that the record contains sufficient evidence to support Bindues’s conviction. We also conclude that the district court properly instructed the jury as to the elements of the crime. Accordingly, on this record, we hold that a reasonable jury could—and in fact, did—find Bindues guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crime charged under 18 U.S.C. § 2251(a). See Sapp, 53 F.3d at 1103. Accordingly, we affirm Bindues’s conviction. B. Next, we consider Bindues’s argument that the district court improperly admitted Agent O’Donnell’s expert testimony on the definition of grooming. Federal Rule of Evidence 702 “governs the admissibility of expert opinion testimony.” United States v. Pehrson, 65 F.4th 526, 540 (10th Cir. 2023). The rule provides that 13  Appellate Case: 24-2117 Document: 58-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 14 A witness who is qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education may testify in the form of an opinion or otherwise if the proponent demonstrates to the court that it is more likely than not that: (a) the expert’s scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will help the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue; (b) the testimony is based on sufficient facts or data; (c) the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods; and (d) the expert’s opinion reflects a reliable application of the principles and methods to the facts of the case. Fed. R. Evid. 702. Rule 702 “imposes on a district court a gatekeeper obligation to ‘ensure that any and all scientific testimony or evidence admitted is not only relevant, but reliable.’” Dodge v. Cotter Corp., 328 F.3d 1212, 1221 (10th Cir. 2003) (quoting Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharms., Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 589 (1993)). Accordingly, a district court must “satisfy itself that the proposed expert testimony is both reliable and relevant, in that it will assist the trier of fact, before permitting a jury to assess such testimony.” United States v. Rodriguez-Felix, 450 F.3d 1117, 1122 (10th Cir. 2006). We review de novo whether the district court applied the Rule 702 standard and whether it “actually performed its gatekeeper role in the first instance.” United States v. Holt, 161 F.4th 1253, 1263 (10th Cir. 2025) (quoting Pehrson, 65 F.4th at 541). Beyond that, we afford “substantial deference to the district court’s 14  Appellate Case: 24-2117 Document: 58-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 15 application” of the Rule 702 standard and review only for abuse of discretion in that regard. Etherton v. Owners Ins. Co., 829 F.3d 1209, 1216 (10th Cir. 2016) (quoting Hollander v. Sandoz Pharm. Corp., 289 F.3d 1193, 1204 (10th Cir. 2002)). As such, we will not disturb a district court’s ruling as to the admissibility of expert testimony unless we conclude that the ruling is “arbitrary, capricious, whimsical or manifestly unreasonable or when we are convinced that the district court made a clear error of judgment or exceeded the bounds of permissible choice in the circumstances.” Id. (quoting Dodge, 328 F.3d at 1223). Bindues does not argue that the district court failed to apply the proper legal standard or abrogated its gatekeeping function. We therefore turn to Bindues’s arguments and review the district court’s ruling for abuse of discretion. See id. In challenging the district court’s decision to permit Agent O’Donnell’s expert testimony, Bindues advances three arguments. We consider and reject each in turn below. i. First, Bindues argues that Agent O’Donnell’s opinions were not the product of reliable principles and methods. To this end, Bindues contends that Agent O’Donnell offered “[a]bsolutely no data or empirical studies” to support his conclusions and that his methodology lacked any predictive application. Aplt. Br. at 8. This argument fails, however, because an expert’s opinions need not be scientific to be admissible under Rule 702. A law enforcement officer’s experience may qualify the officer to testify about 15  Appellate Case: 24-2117 Document: 58-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 16 common criminal practices. See United States v. Garza, 566 F.3d 1194, 1199 (10th Cir. 2009). Rule 702(a) itself countenances expert testimony based on “technical” or “specialized knowledge.” Fed. R. Evid. 702(a). And specialized training and substantial experience in a pertinent field help establish an expert’s qualifications. See, e.g., Conroy v. Vilsack, 707 F.3d 1163, 1169 (10th Cir. 2013). Therefore, an expert’s testimony is not unreliable simply because it is “not based on scientific methodology.” United States v. Kamahele, 748 F.3d 984, 999 (10th Cir. 2014). Agent O’Donnell has formal training in psychology and years of specialized law enforcement experience. He leads the FBI’s division that investigates and profiles child sexual exploitation crimes. Agent O’Donnell testified that he has “been assigned [to] and investigated dozens of [child sex abuse] cases involving thousands of suspects” during his tenure at the FBI. R. Vol. III at 13–15. Moreover, Agent O’Donnell testified that the definition of grooming he discussed was developed by the FBI based on years of experience and information collected by the various behavioral analysis units. The district court properly credited these factors when it admitted Agent O’Donnell’s testimony. Therefore, we reject Bindues’s argument that Agent O’Donnell’s testimony was not the product of reliable principles and methods. ii. Second, Bindues argues that Agent O’Donnell’s opinions were irrelevant and, therefore, unhelpful to the jury. Specifically, Bindues contends that Agent O’Donnell’s testimony was not helpful because Agent O’Donnell could not use the 16  Appellate Case: 24-2117 Document: 58-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 17 FBI’s definition to determine whether grooming had occurred in certain hypotheticals posed by counsel on direct and cross examination. Moreover, concerning relevancy, Bindues argues that Agent O’Donnell’s testimony could not have assisted the jury in determining whether Bindues groomed Doe in this case because his grooming model is not predictive. We reject these arguments, however, because the government offered Agent O’Donnell’s testimony as relevant modus operandi testimony. “Relevance” is essentially a shorthand for Rule 702’s requirement that expert testimony “help the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue.” Fed. R. Evid. 702(a); see Daubert, 509 U.S. at 591. In prior sexual abuse cases, we have held that jurors benefit from expert testimony concerning sexual abusers’ “modus operandi.” See United States v. Batton, 602 F.3d 1191, 1202 (10th Cir. 2010) (holding that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in allowing testimony concerning “the modus operandi of sex offenders” because such information is not “common knowledge”). Agent O’Donnell’s testimony concerning grooming amounted to helpful modus operandi testimony and it aided the jurors in their assessment of the case. True, as the district court observed, Agent O’Donnell’s grooming definition “lacks predictive power, lacks testability, [and] lacks verifiability.” R. Vol. I at 816. But that presents no issue to its admissibility because the government did not offer the testimony for those purposes. Instead, the government offered Agent O’Donnell’s testimony to “provide[] a useful vocabulary for [the] jurors” as they assessed the evidence presented against 17  Appellate Case: 24-2117 Document: 58-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 18 Bindues. Id. at 822. In this way, Agent O’Donnell’s grooming model is no different from the myriad other criminological models employed by experts in criminal cases to explain everything from drug cartels to Ponzi schemes. That is, the grooming model does not seek to provide a definitive answer in any one case; instead, through aggregate data, it seeks to provide a heuristic for assessing allegations of grooming in a variety of cases. The government accomplished this by having Agent O’Donnell opine on the commonly observed stages of grooming. Moreover, Agent O’Donnell offered insight into certain behavioral traits commonly displayed by sex abuse victims: for example, the phenomenon by which a victim comes to actively participate in their own victimization. And so we share the district court’s opinion that Agent O’Donnell’s grooming model “is no less fit a subject for [Rule] 702 testimony than is any model of criminal behavior.” Id. at 816. We therefore reject Bindues’s arguments to the contrary. Bindues also argues that Agent O’Donnell’s expert testimony on grooming could not have been helpful to the jury because we already defined “grooming” in United States v. Flechs, 98 F.4th 1250 (10th Cir. 2024). From this, Bindues concludes that expert testimony cannot further aid a juror in understanding grooming. Bindues’s argument conflates evidentiary standards with legal standards. In Flechs, we held that a district court properly instructed a jury that grooming is a “substantial step” in the attempted commission of an offense under 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b), which criminalizes enticing a minor to engage in prostitution or any 18  Appellate Case: 24-2117 Document: 58-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 19 sexual activity. 98 F.4th at 1248–55. There, the defendant had been charged with attempted enticement of a minor in violation of § 2422(b). See id. at 1242. As in any prosecution for an inchoate offense, the government bore the burden to establish that the defendant intended to entice the victim and took a substantial step toward enticement. See id. at 1244–45. In a prior case, we had held that § 2422 criminalizes the “sexual grooming of minors, regardless of any intent to consummate the illegal sexual activity.” United States v. Faust, 795 F.3d 1243, 1249 (10th Cir. 2015) (quotation omitted). And so in Flechs, the term “grooming” as it appeared in the district court’s jury instruction carried a formal, legally significant definition because grooming itself constituted an element of the charged inchoate offense. See 98 F.4th at 1250–54. But Bindues was not charged with an inchoate offense—he was charged and convicted for completed offenses under both 18 U.S.C. §§ 2422(b) and 2251. Therefore, evidence that Bindues groomed Doe does not go to the question of whether Bindues’s conduct qualifies as the criminal offense known as “grooming,” which we recognized as proscribed by § 2422(b) in Faust. Nor does it go to establish that Bindues took a substantial step toward the commission of an offense under § 2422(b) because Bindues completed his criminal act. And so Flechs is of no moment here. Instead, Agent O’Donnell and the government used the term “grooming” to describe how Bindues violated § 2251. That is, the government offered evidence that Bindues groomed Doe to help the jury understand how Bindues convinced a fourteen- 19  Appellate Case: 24-2117 Document: 58-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 20 year-old girl to send him sexually explicit images in violation of § 2251. And more generally, Agent O’Donnell explained that grooming may cause a victim to participate in their own victimization. Accordingly, we reject Bindues’s arguments that Agent O’Donnell’s testimony was irrelevant and unhelpful. iii. And third, Bindues argues that the prejudicial risk of Agent O’Donnell’s testimony outweighed its probative value. We reject this argument nearly out of hand. Federal Rule of Evidence 403 sets a low bar for admissibility. Cf. United States v. Watson, 766 F.3d 1219, 1241 (10th Cir. 2014) (holding that litigants face an “onerous” burden when arguing that a district court abused its discretion in Rule 403 balancing). District courts retain “considerable discretion in performing the Rule 403 balancing test.” United States v. Cerno, 529 F.3d 926, 936 (10th Cir. 2008) (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting United States v. Tan, 254 F.3d 1204, 1211 (10th Cir. 2001)). Moreover, “our law favors admission of all relevant evidence,” which means that Rule 403 is “an extraordinary remedy that should be used sparingly.” Watson, 766 F.3d at 1241 (citation modified). Bindues offers no reason why the district court should have invoked this extraordinary remedy here. For all the foregoing reasons, Agent O’Donnell’s testimony clears Rule 403’s low hurdle for admissibility. See supra § II.B.i–ii. As for Bindues’s arguments concerning the risk of prejudice, the district court 20  Appellate Case: 24-2117 Document: 58-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 21 thoughtfully considered them below and found that although “[t]he probative value of [Agent] O’Donnell’s testimony is not very high, [ ] neither is its prejudicial value very high.” R. Vol. I at 824. The district court further reduced any risk of prejudice from Agent O’Donnell’s testimony by permitting Bindues’s expert to testify “with a contrary expert theory.” Id. at 826. Accordingly, we reject Bindues’s arguments that the district court abused its discretion in conducting Rule 403 balancing. iv. In sum, we have considered and rejected all of Bindues’s arguments concerning the admissibility of Agent O’Donnell’s expert testimony. Having considered the record in full under the applicable legal standards, we hold that the district court did not abuse its discretion when it permitted the expert testimony of Agent O’Donnell. 3 3 We note that a prior panel of this Court recently reached the same conclusion concerning Agent O’Donnell’s testimony on similar facts. See United States v. Rivera, No. 24-2013, 2025 WL 1684447, at *7–8 (10th Cir. June 16, 2025) (unpublished). 21  Appellate Case: 24-2117 Document: 58-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 22 III. In light of the foregoing, we AFFIRM Bindues’s conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 2251 and the district court’s decision to permit the expert testimony of Agent O’Donnell. Entered for the Court Allison H. Eid Circuit Judge 22