Washington, D.C. – A 21-year-old District of Columbia man, John Anthony III, has pled guilty to Possession of Material Involving Child Pornography, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor announced today.

Anthony entered his guilty plea today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia before the Honorable Ellen S. Huvelle. As a result of a prior conviction, the defendant faces a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison, and a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison when he is sentenced on November 5, 2008. Anthony is also subject to enhanced penalties because some of the images of child pornography he possessed involved prepubescent minors or minors who had not attained the age of 12 years, and some of the images and videos he possessed portrayed sadistic or masochistic conduct or other depictions of violence.

In 2006, the defendant was convicted in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia of attempted sexual abuse of a child. While on probation for this offense, Anthony submitted to a polygraph test that was administered as part of his probation. After the polygraph provided inconclusive results, court supervision officers questioned Anthony about child pornography, and he admitted that he had viewed child pornography on the computer at his mother's home.

On October 12, 2007, members of the United States Attorney's Office Criminal Investigation Unit and the Metropolitan Police Department's Internet Crimes Against Children Unit executed a search warrant at Anthony’s mother’s home in Southeast Washington, D.C. Detectives spoke to Anthony, who admitted that he downloaded onto his home computer images of children engaged in sex acts. A forensic analysis of the computer revealed images and videos depicting child pornography. The analysis also revealed that in the days prior to the execution of the search warrant, Anthony deleted over 3000 files from the computer, some of which contained child pornography.

The images located on Anthony’s computer were taken to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), where they were compared with NCMEC’s Child Recognition & Identification System (CRIS). The analysis resulted in four of the images being identified as known minors, i.e., under age 18.

In announcing the guilty plea, U.S. Attorney Taylor commended the outstanding investigative work of United States Attorney’s Office Criminal Investigator John Marsh for the forensic computer analysis he provided, as well as the following members of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force who provided investigative support: Metropolitan Police Detectives Jonathan Andrews and Timothy Palchak. He also recognized Supervisory Court Supervision Officer Matthew Kiely and Court Supervision Officer Penny Spivey, both of whom followed up on the defendant’s initial disclosures and assisted with the investigation. Lastly, the U.S. Attorney praised the work of Assistant U.S. Attorney Catherine K. Connelly, who investigated and prosecuted the case.