The Federal government is devoting an enormous amount of its law enforcement resources to prosecute child pornography cases. These cases will always garner political support and funding and, as a result, we are seeing many of these types of prosecutions around the country. Many of the recent cases involve various file sharing programs.
In Federal court child pornography cases are typically generated by means of an undercover law enforcement officer making use of file-sharing programs searching the files of other users of with typical queries that yield child pornography. Once the undercover officer identifies a file-sharing user in possession of child pornography on his or her computer, the law enforcement agents execute a search warrant on the user’s house (located by obtaining IP data from the person’s internet provider), in the early morning hours. In order to preclude the defense “I didn’t know that material was on my computer,” the agents interview the suspected primary user of the computer while that user is not under arrest and coax the user to admit to knowingly possessing the child pornography. The lawyers at Broden & Mickelsen, LLP understand the process of defending someone facing these charges in Federal court.
The Federal penalties for possession of child pornography are incredibly harsh. If the defendant truly was interested in child pornography the defendant usually has collected numerous images. In these circumstances the defendant’s presumptive sentence, according the United States Sentencing Guideline for a first-time offender, can approach 12-20 years of imprisonment. If Broden & Mickelsen, LLP cannot win one of these cases on the issue of guilt and innocence, nevertheless, we will zealously defend our client through sentencing , and have a proven track record of successfully reducing our client’s sentences in these cases.
