Monday, May 19, 2014

Former Sarcoxie board member sentenced to two years on child pornography charge

Former Sarcoxie R-2 Board of Education member John Lewis was sentenced to two years in prison today during a 12-minute hearing in a federal courtroom in Springfield.

As part of the plea agreement, Lewis was sentenced on a charge of possession of child pornography. A second charge was dismissed. After Lewis does his time, he will be on supervised release for 10 years, according to court documents.

Lewis pleaded guilty January 15.

The crime to which Lewis pleaded guilty was described in the plea agreement:

On October 4, 2012, a Missouri State Highway Patrol (MSHP) Trooper initiated an investigation regarding John R. Lewis at the request of the Jasper County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. After taking the initial
complaint, the Trooper interviewed witnesses.

On December 5, 2012, MSHP Troopers contacted Lewis at his residence located at 4360 Dandelion, Sarcoxie, Missouri. At the conclusion of an interview with Lewis, an MSHP Trooper asked Lewis for his consent to search his computers for any images of child pornography. Lewis stated he had images on his computer he did not want to be made public. Lewis stated he had two computers in his residence, a desktop and a laptop. When Lewis mentioned the desktop he pointed to a nearby office that was visible. Lewis stated he had downloaded images of naked children from a nudist website to his desktop computer. Lewis refused to give consent.

Based on the above information, the Troopers secured the residence and obtained a search warrant to search Lewis’s residence including the computers and all electronic storage devices. During a subsequent search an additional desktop computer was located in a basement bedroom along with multiple electronic storage devices. All computers and electronic storage devices were located inside the residence.

The computers and storage drives were submitted to the Southwest Missouri Cyber Crimes Task Force (SMCCTF) for analysis. The forensic examiner reviewed 19 multimedia files that he labeled as child pornography due to the activity depicted and 113 still images of suspected child pornography. The multimedia files and still images primarily depicted male children, with the youngest child being approximately 5 years of age, engaged in the display of genitalia, masturbation, oral sex, and anal intercourse.

These images travelled in interstate or foreign commerce via the internet.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

He has been a pervert all his life.

Anonymous said...

What a huge failure on the part of the sentencing court. I think the money is in prosecuting and imprisoning people for crimes that allow forfeitures and huge fines. Child molesters and child porn freaks are a burden on the DOJ. I saw where someone else just got probation for this same crime. We are too busy filling up the prisons with small time weed dealers, drug addicts and white collar criminals and allowing the perverts to hurt our kids over and over and over.