Our Lawyer was an idiot. My husband had never been introuble with the law, had a great job (upper managment at a distrubution center) and is a wonderful man. We had never had any issues with the law so we had no clue!!!!. The attorny told us we either take the plea or they will send it to federal and everything we had read about federal was so horrible we were terrified so we took the plea, this was all for show as far as I am concerned. We had two children if they were worried about the child why did not one talk to my kids if they were concerned, we paid the attorney an obsence amount for the same thing we could of got with a public defender. My husband retained the attorny and about a month in we new we made a mistake, but every other attorney I spoke to said they would not take the case because we had already retained an attorny and they will not second guess each other (some kind of bro code). I did speak to another attorny after the fact and he said that even if we could prove the attorny was incompetant we would also have to prove the outcome would be diffrent and that attorney said all CP cases they are running with so that would not happen. I will just continue to tell our story as people need to understand this could be there husband, brother, uncle and son, it can happen to anyone regardless of intention or not!

My son had no priors either and a full time job and a place of his own.

The Federal Prisons are better places to stay. My son has the music room where he's in a band there, getting his GED and taking art lessons. He wishes he could practice his Kung fu but they're not allowed to practice martial arts in prison. The food is better and he can buy more things in commissary like a radio and a watch (which he needs because everything runs by the clock) But he gets less good time, if any. When you're in state the living conditions can be a hundred times worse.. my son was in Sanford county.. where Zimmerman is who killed that boy. . It's one of the worse shitholes you could imagine. But you get more good time off your sentence.
As far as attorney you need a 'cybercrime' attorney. They're the latest in specialized attorneys. Our case was seen in Orlando and our attorney is from Miami, which cost us more because I had to fly him. But he was worth it. 1 year less in sentencing is worth it. I think if we kept the first crappy attorney my son would have gotten a lot more than , maybe even the 10 years maximum that was in the plea bargain. He got 30 months, minus those deductions that our forensics proved.
1st attorney cost $25,000 and I'm still fighting with him thru the Florida Bar. 2nd was $50,000 plus expenses and then we had 2 forensics, therapy and our own psych evaluation and he was in Ft. Lauderdale so that was a 4 hour drive to see him. Not counting phone bills, commissary and other extras defending him cost over $100,000 and I'm not a rich woman by any means.

Wow, then I am not sure a better attorny would of done us any good. Considering what could of happened my husband did very well!!!!. Like i stated before, when all was said and done, one video 1min and 42 seconds. He got 6 months house arrest and 5 years probation and life on the megan's law. Like I said no one is worried about him, his PO sees him once every 3-6 months, they just want there monthly check. My whole reason to fight is for my kids. There father is a RSO and that has been hard on the oldest. He just does not understand, but I wanted him to know you never give up the fight on something you believe in and you fight for your rights.

I agree christad, we paid $5000 because we thought it was state and then a year later it went federal. We had 0 money, didn't even own our home. Our attorney accepted to be a public defender for my husband because of all the cases he has seen in 30 years, he thought my husband was one that did NOT deserve to do jail time. My husband's therapist, who refused to testify in court, testified for nothing in my husband's defense, if that tells you what these 2 professionals, that see lots of sex offenders in both their offices thought, of my husband.Troy Stabenow had considered him to be the poster child but in the end decided against it. Not sure why. Our attorney spent $35,000+ out of his own pocket for defense and if it weren't for the damn mandatory minimum( 5 years), he got us 3 years when the guidelines were 18-22 and the prosecution's finest plea was 10 years. My husband had 2 POs, one in MO and one in IA. He had to answer to each because he still work in MO, but lived in IA. Neither one of them were concerned. I think we saw the IA PO 5 times in 17 months and only saw the MO PO at court (3 times). Guess we will see how that changes in 3 years. We may end up with the same PO when he is released because he went from Pre-trial to post-release and has our area.

It sounds like you had an attorny working for you and that is wonderful!! But again people need to understand that even if this was done on purpose, it is pictures and the therapist my husband seen said that he was not a preditor!! He stated in a letter to court that this was not something he did on purpose, but it did not matter it was a witch hunt at the time and the DA did not want to hear anything other then felony counts. I grew up in IL and it was right on the border of IA and MO and I give you credit because the Megan's Law restrictions are so hard there. Idiling, stay strong it will get better, we just have to continue to fight for the rights of our husbands, sons, daughter, ect.

Nakohichi, can you tell me how do I ask for a Presidential Pardon? My brother has not been sentenced till May 11th. Tho it is a known fact withing the system that Orange County, Calif. hands down life every time, they from what I have heard they have a # on the prison wall, (next to the phones, stating if you were sentenced for life call this #) I just want to be ready, and act immediately when that sentence is herd. I point blank asked the attorney whom is a PD what is he really looking at, he said least min 15 yrs. That is not acceptable he has served 5 yrs fighting this case, yes it came back guilty. These charges are BS and blackmail was done by one of the kids, asking my mother who is 82 for her cell to be turned back on, and a new laptop. She said NO, then she said well I will call the DA (she was 1 week to being 18) and say lies about my Father!!!!!!! She did it, OK i'm crying I have to stop! If I knew what i know today I would have given her the damn 1,000. I really would have! That being said I need to stop as my daughter is asking why I'm crying.

I have questioned this before but i am still dumbfounded.....someone can send you Cp and you can be charged????? This cannot be right. Someone please clarify, there has to be more too it.

DiDi - yes - if for some reason your computer becomes the target of an investigation for whatever reason and there is CP found on it then it doesn't matter how it got there or even if you viewed it - you can (and most likely WILL) be charged with possession of CP. It doesn't matter if you knew it was there or whether it can be demonstrated that you ever asked for it or searched for it or intentionally downloaded it, etc.

As technologies change there are more and more ways this can get there too. Back in 1996 when my case occurred I was a member of Prodigy (which was one of three main ways you could access the Internet back then - you couldn't simply open a browser and go where you wanted to go as you can today - you joined a service such as AOL, Prodigy, or one other that I can't think of at the moment and that service acted as what they called an "on-ramp" to the information superhighway). With Prodigy you mainly had services like chat rooms, email, and the ability to browse certain sites. When you logged into your Prodigy account any email you had received would automatically be downloaded to a temporary folder on your computer along with any attachments to those emails. If someone you didn't even know had sent you email (which was easy to do since anyone in any chat room could simply right click on your name and send you an IM or an email) had sent you an email with CP images attached then those images were moved to your computer as soon as you opened your account. Of course you didn't KNOW this at the time unless you were knowledgeable of the inner-workings of the Prodigy service (which you typically would not be unless you did a LOT of research and had some reason to want to know - such as after you had been indicted or something). Obviously with something like email you would typically open all of the emails you receive and would read them, so if someone had sent you an email with CP images attached you would see them, right? WRONG - the problem was that because you were so inundated with trolls who simply hung out in these chat rooms and would send you so many unsolicited emails you often would simply trash any whose sender that you didn't recognize not realize that even though you moved them to your trash they still existed on your hard drive.

In my case these trolls had sent a lot of emails and many of them had 3 images attached. There were something like 40-60 images that were in my attachments and the government claimed that 4 to 6 of them "contained images of people who APPEARED to be below the age of 18 engaged in some form of lewd or lascivious act," which at the time was all that had to exist in order to be considered CP. I was told that even if we could prove that a) I NEVER asked anyone for ANY image to be sent to me, b) I NEVER looked at those images, and c) the people in the images WERE in fact over the age of 18, that I could STILL be convicted of possession of CP! EVEN if they people in the images were CLOTHED!

I was like WTF kind of shit is that???? Bottom line - if they WANTED to convict you of possession of CP back then they WOULD convict you! There are MANY people sitting in federal prison today who had similar cases - many will die there.

In 2005 the SCOTUS ruled that the federal statute was unconstitutionally over broad with respect to the "appears to be below the age of 18" language. This changed the landscape considerably. However, with newer technologies such as Limewire (which I personally have never even seen, and from what it sounds like I'm lucky that I haven't) you can still be sent videos and images that you a) didn't request, b) didn't view, and c) don't even know are there.

So even today if you end up for whatever reason as the subject of an investigation by state or federal authorities you can easily be found to be in possession of CP. This is one of the scariest situations that exists IMO in our country.

Presidential Pardons are not supposed to be sent in under the inmate is out of prison and on probation for 5 years. You can pull the pardon on the governments website.
There is a chance for a waiver on the time limit. I'm desperate . I've requested a waiver and tell them why.. because my son was basically framed by the feds. He didn't do anything but delete some accidentally downloaded cps. We have proof. The judge and prosecutor knew my son did it by accident but they made a lesson of him, as the prosecutor said that they can't look like they're easy on these laws. So, a pardon may not be everyone. If my son did something or if they tell me that they won't give him one when I send in my papers (and I have a folder full of stuff, nicely organized) then I'll try it again next year. and the year after.
Until I can find an attorney in PA who can help me prove that his confession was coerced, which is obvious when you see the forensics which disproved his confession.. this is my only hope right now.

Yes Terry, and with the new law in Florida if there is 1 child in that cp you get 5 years and if there are 2 children you get 10 years. This is a new law just passed here in Florida which makes no sense. How do you know what's in that cp until it's opened.
The Feds said my son had 2319 'suspect' cps, when they were looking at 2316 music videos and 2 cp that my son never saw and never opened. They one they said they found him with was not found on the computer even after 3 forensics studies was done on it. . so I wonder. I've seen a story of another young man where they couldn't find the initial cp they said was on his either.

Nakohichi: My husband was they same he had 100's of songs downloaded from limewire so when we got the report and he met with the megan;s law board they said so you have thousands of cp, and he said no all of what is listed is music I downloaded, when they went looking they could not find the CP video they convicted him on there was nothing there. Investigators can not tell the diffrence between music and CP video, good god how does this happen. It continues to blow my mind, we should have fought for him, but was so scared we took the plea and I will regreat that for the rest of my life!

Don't regret taking a plea.
I don't know how they can charge our men with stuff they didn't find. My son wasn't charged with that one but they used it. as it had a 3 y.o. in it along with the description in detail of what was in that cp. It was in every single piece of their litigation. I was in the plea bargain, seach warrant, psi and in sentencing, yet that 1 cp wasn't found nor was he charged on that particular one.
Our attorney asked that the description and info on that cp was taken out because it looked bad and it wasn't relevant to the case but the proscutor said no and that if we kept asking about it they would just up charged and go to trial. Not like we had a choice. But when anyone sees his paperwork it looks really bad with that in it plus his 'confession'.
They charged him 1 count for he Vicky series which is everywhere.. and old series which will never go away because there are thousands of copies of that series. But they get away with it because they're saving the children.

That is what they all say, saving a child! But they never touched a child that is what gets me. I understand that.there is consquences to your actions but dear god , this is crazy! But what they don't think about is my children and what it has done to them. Thank god we are a very close family and my kids can tell me anyhing but why is it you can get a DUI, Sell drugs, ect and get a second chance but with CP they just though the book at you, I think and will always believe this is all money motivated.