In what is thought to be the first such case in Palm Beach County, a 20-year-old man has landed an extraordinary plea deal that will spare him prison time in exchange for telling youths about the perils of viewing child pornography online.
Michael Morris Booth, of Jupiter, who says he viewed child porn images briefly three years ago after a friend told him how to do it, pleaded guilty Wednesday to five counts of possession of obscene material.
Facing up to 140 years in prison, Booth was sentenced to five years' probation. According to one of the conditions of his plea, Booth must work 30 hours a month on child pornography issues and computer safety for the State Attorney's Office or the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Booth may soon be speaking to groups, including students, about the dangers of viewing child porn.
Possessing just one image of child porn on a hard drive is punishable by up to five years in prison.
Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, in Washington, said Wednesday he had never heard of such a plea deal. He said he hopes it doesn't become a precedent but he sees it as a creative solution in an individual case.
Allen hopes Booth will raise awareness about the ease of accessing illegal content online and the consequences of unfettered exploration.
The center is a national clearinghouse fielding tens of thousands of tips each year about child pornography. This year alone, Allen predicts, center employees will view 12 million to 13 million pictures and videos in an attempt to identify the children and the producers of the images.
Half of those pictured are prepubescent children, not teens, he said.
"America doesn't understand what it is," Allen said. "The images get more graphic, and the children get younger every day."
Booth says a friend suggested he plug in a few search terms to see some crazy stuff online — which he did. "It was disgusting," he said after his plea.
When Jupiter police came calling a few years later, he didn't think much of it and turned over his computer, which by then was broken and sitting in a closet.
Booth's attorney, former prosecutor Marc Shiner, said Booth was "being a stupid kid" and had no clue about the ramifications. In fact, most people "don't have a clue," he said.
State Attorney Michael McAuliffe has made child porn cases a priority. Since he took office in 2009, bolstered by a predator task force of various police agencies, the number of prosecuted child pornography possession cases is rising, as are the prison penalties.
Cases previously settled with offers of probation for first-time offenders are now resulting in prison terms, Shiner said.
"It's an extreme change over the previous administration in Palm Beach County," he said. "And I'm not saying it's wrong. But people need to be educated. People need to know the risks."
Time and again, the felony dockets at the Palm Beach County Courthouse list dozens of charges against individuals for possession of sexual performance by a child or transmitting child pornography, with each charge based on each image discovered on their computers. One defendant was charged about 80 times in one case.
Under Florida law, the penalty for having an image of child pornography on a computer is five years in prison. The penalty for disseminating it, whether knowingly or unknowingly on file-sharing sites such as limewire.com, is 15 years.
Of the 50 or so people Shiner or his law firm have defended on such charges, most had no criminal history, he said. "They all say, 'All I did was look at some pictures. How can someone send me to prison for 10-20-30 years?' "
Because they can.
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