RJ May Pre-Trial Motions: Battle Rages Over What His Jury Will See And Hear

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by JENN WOOD

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With his trial on child pornography charges less than a month away, former South Carolina lawmaker Robert John “RJ” May III is testing the limits of his recent decision to represent himself in federal court. This week, four pre-trial motions landed on the desk of U.S. district court judge Cameron McGowan Currie tied to May’s case – one filed by federal prosecutors and three penned by May in his own defense.

May was arrested and charged in June with ten counts of distributing child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Federal prosecutors in the office of U.S. attorney Bryan Stirling have accused May of distributing more than 220 child pornography videos over a five-day span in late March and early April 2024.

The government’s latest filing — a motion in limine accompanied by a Rule 404(b) notice (.pdf)— seeks to block the jury from hearing certain arguments while preserving prosecutors’ ability to introduce evidence of May’s alleged prior bad acts.

May, meanwhile, has pushed back with a flurry of handwritten pro se motions: a motion in limine to exclude evidence (.pdf), a motion to suppress paired with a request for a Franks hearing (.pdf), and a motion to change venue (.pdf).

A Franks hearing is granted by federal courts if a defendant makes a preliminary showing that search warrant affidavits used to obtain evidence against them contained “false statements” central to the determination of probable cause.

The four filings preview the high-stakes battles over what May’s future jurors ultimately see and hear – or don’t see and hear – when testimony begins in early October. They also underscore how May, once a prominent Republican political strategist and leader of the conservative wing of his party, is now relying solely on his own hand-written arguments to keep decades of potential prison time at bay.

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PROSECUTORS LAY GROUNDWORK AHEAD OF TRIAL

In a sweeping pre-trial motion filed September 17, 2025, federal prosecutors asked Currie to expand what jurors will see when May’s trial begins in October. The 21-page filing argued that evidence of hundreds of uncharged child pornography files tied to May’s alleged Kik account should be admitted alongside the ten videos which form the basis of the indictment.

Prosecutors advanced three independent grounds for the admission of these “uncharged” files:

1. The uncharged distributions are “inextricably intertwined” with the charged conduct — part of a single five-day spree that cannot be separated into artificial pieces.
2. They qualify as evidence of other acts of “child molestation” under Rule 414(a) of the Federal Rules of Evidence.
3. They should be admitted under Rule 404(b) to prove May’s intent, knowledge, plan, identity, and lack of mistake or accident.

Prosecutors stressed these uncharged files mirror the charged ones in every meaningful respect: they were sent through the same Kik account, to many of the same users, using the same IP addresses.

“They are the same acts from the same conversations involving the same users and the same files on the same days,” the motion stated.

The motion also laid out the government’s plan to present the evidence against May in a way jurors can digest. Prosecutors asked to introduce summary charts and demonstrative aids under Rules 1006 and 611(a) — including chat transcripts, distribution logs, IP address summaries, and timelines linking May’s devices to the Kik account.

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Among these exhibits is a two-page map showing alleged recipients of child pornography across 18 states and six countries, a chart prosecutors say condenses “a large volume of Kik and IP records from numerous sources” into a clear visualization of what they describe as a “prolific distribution scheme”.

The government noted May had no objection to the map being admitted at a pretrial “meet and mark.” He did, however, object to the wording of other charts — including those summarizing Kik chats and cross-platform account activity — arguing they were prejudicial or confusing. Prosecutors told the court they were reviewing his objections – but maintained the charts were accurate and necessary to prevent jurors from being forced to sift through tens of thousands of pages and gigabytes of raw data.

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RELATED | RJ MAY TO REPRESENT HIMSELF IN FEDERAL CHILD PORN TRIAL

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MAY FIRES BACK WITH HIS OWN MOTIONS

As prosecutors pushed to broaden the scope of evidence admitted against him, May flooded the court with his own handwritten filings. Acting as his own lawyer, the disgraced former legislator submitted the three aforementioned motions: one seeking to exclude certain evidence, one hoping to suppress evidence (accompanied by a request for a Franks hearing) and one to change venue.

In his motion to exclude evidence, May asked the court to bar references to smartphone apps other than Kik, arguing prosecutors have admitted there is “zero evidence” tying him to CSAM on other platforms. He also sought to block testimony about his travel history, exclude CSAM files obtained from third parties (on the grounds they might mislead jurors into thinking the videos came from his devices), and prevent any mention of the alias “Eric Rentling,” which he says is irrelevant to the charges and highly prejudicial.

In a separate filing, May asked the court to suppress evidence tied to “Target Phone #1,” a device seized during an August 5, 2024 raid on his home. He further requested a Franks hearing to probe what he called government misconduct in securing the warrant. At the center of his argument? What May alleged were conflicting statements by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agent Britton Lorenzen. In her sworn affidavit, Lorenzen claimed collectors of child pornography “rarely, if ever, dispose of their sexually explicit materials.” At May’s detention hearing in June, however, she testified it was “very, very common” to execute such warrants and uncover no CSAM at all.

May argued these contradictions go to “the heart of probable cause” and amount to either recklessness or perjury. He further claimed Lorenzen relied on boilerplate “collector profile” language that has been cut and pasted into warrants “for decades,” rather than tailoring it to the facts of his case. By his reading, once these “false statements” are stripped away, the affidavit contained no basis for probable cause — and no magistrate would have approved the search.

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May’s final filing took aim at the location of his trial. In a motion to change venue, he argued sustained and inflammatory pre-trial publicity has poisoned the jury pool in South Carolina, making it impossible for him to receive a fair and impartial trial.

Citing Irvin v. Dowd and other cases as precedent, May claimed the coverage has been both recent and pervasive — and in some cases fueled by the government itself. He alleged that the initial news of the August 2024 raid on his home reached FITSNews through a “source inside the government,” and that his June 2025 arrest was carried out in the presence of the same outlet, suggesting coordination between prosecutors and the press.

He also pointed to the government’s public filing of a Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act (CAFRA) extension request in October 2024, despite the case being under seal, which he said triggered a new wave of stories predicting an imminent indictment.

More recently, May claimed, media reports have escalated in tone — including references that labeled him a “child sex abuser” and implied hands-on abuse of children, even though the indictment is limited to distribution charges. Attached to his motion were what he described as “dozens of articles” documenting this sustained coverage, which he argued only “scratches the surface” of what potential jurors have already consumed.

According to May, this environment — a mix of political intrigue, leaked filings, and sensational headlines — has “tainted the jury pool” in South Carolina’s Columbia division. His motion insists that moving the trial to another federal district is the only way to preserve his right to a fair trial.

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WHAT’S NEXT…

Judge Currie is set to hear arguments on the pending motions at a pre-trial hearing scheduled for September 24, 2025 in Columbia. At that hearing, prosecutors will press to expand the scope of evidence through their Rule 404(b) and 414 requests, while May — acting as his own attorney — will argue to suppress evidence, exclude categories of testimony, and relocate the trial altogether.

The rulings could prove pivotal. If the government prevails, jurors may see not only the ten videos charged in the indictment but also hundreds of uncharged files, supported by maps, charts, and expert testimony. If May succeeds, key pieces of evidence could be stripped from the record — or the trial could be moved outside South Carolina.

For now, May remains confined to the Edgefield County Detention Center awaiting jury selection, which is scheduled to begin October 8, 2025. His trial is set to start the following day.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …

As a private investigator turned journalist, Jenn Wood brings a unique skill set to FITSNews as its research director. Known for her meticulous sourcing and victim-centered approach, she helps shape the newsroom’s most complex investigative stories while producing the FITSFiles and Cheer Incorporated podcasts. Jenn lives in South Carolina with her family, where her work continues to spotlight truth, accountability, and justice.

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