What a coincidence that this cop never did anything that landed himself in jail for his whole career, but then after he retired, he suddenly turned abusive. /s
I don’t know exactly what he did, but 17 years seems excessive for what is described in the article. I wouldn’t be surprised if the plea deal was specifically giving a long sentence on this sort of crime so that another crime could be dropped.
Like, let’s say that in addition to all of these computer chats, he actually abused a child in person. If he pleads guilty to that, he might have a hard time in prison. Also, the child he abused might have the truth come out. So, they figured they’d let him plead to this other crime to save everybody embarrassment, because he’s going to die in prison, anyways. It’s just a theory to explain why the sentence seems long.
May I ask why you think that sentence is excessively long? It’s ten counts. I don’t know anything about VA law, but in some states the maximum sentence for one count of child solicitation is five years, so it could have been a lot longer.
Edit: changed PA to VA whoops
Look, I had a comment typed out to explain this, but I don’t think people act rationally when it comes to cases involving children, so even if I can perfectly explain why I think it, I’d expect a neverending fight and tons of shitty downvoters.
I think it’s enough to say that it just seems surprising to get 17 years in prison if nobody was physically harmed.
I haven’t read a lot about this, and the article linked here is pretty light on details, but it may be related to him being a school resource officer, or possibly the search they did at his home. But that’s also all speculation, so don’t really know.
I’m sorry if I seemed like I was trying to pick a fight, I wasn’t being disingenuous when I asked.
I didn’t think you were trying to pick a fight or were disingenuous. What I thought was that when I read my original answer that I had written, that somebody would end up reading that and would try to fight with me.
This is just from my experience from some other forums, but on those, they always thought there was no punishment enough for some crimes, especially child abuse, and they even rejoiced in the thought that the person might be raped to death in jail. If you even suggested that might be an excessive punishment, people would fight with you.
