Contact Us for a Free Consultation (213) 542-0979

Receipt Of Child Pornography in California

Obviously, this is a very serious sex crime and usually where I see these cases happening is where the federal government will get involved and they will prosecute those individuals who are receiving child pornography throughout the United States.

Tracking IP Addresses

How I see them figuring it out is, usually they will take over some sort of a website or they will put their own information up and then people start interacting with that website trying to get child pornography, or when they take over the website they can see all the IP addresses that receive child pornography from that website and the feds go out and start executing warrants at those people's homes if that's where their computer is, and when they get in there they will confirm with the person: that's your computer, nobody else uses it.

They will take the computer and that person's phones, any iPads or any electronic devices that might be able to contain any type of child pornography.

Types of Child Pornography Charges

There's a bunch of different charges related to child pornography.  There's receipt of child pornography, there's distribution of child pornography, there's production of child pornography, and all those things come with potential custody time.  So, even though it seems like they're splitting hairs, basically what they're doing is, they're making sure there's a charge for all circumstances related to any type of possession, distribution or receipt of child pornography.

So, if you've got one of these cases, obviously it's not a good idea to talk to law enforcement.  That's another thing that they do.  When they come in your house, execute the search warrant, take all of your devices, confirm with you that you're the only one that uses the computer that they suspect has child pornography on it, they're also going to take a statement from you and a lot of times people will admit that they did receive child pornography.  Then you just basically tie-up the whole case for them and put it in a nice neat package so they can easily prosecute you at the federal level.

Not all cases are prosecuted at the federal level when it comes to receipt of child pornography.  They als prosecute this at the state level.  Where I see the dividing line in state versus federal as far as receipt of child pornography goes is, the more images you have or videos, pictures — however the form of the child pornography is — the more you have, the more likely it is that the feds will come involved.

In other words, if you only have a few images it seems highly unlikely the feds will touch that case.  They will pass that on to the state government and see if they want to be involved with that type of a matter.  Obviously, there's a huge difference because there are mandatory minimum sentences at the federal level when it comes to child pornography.  So, you're usually in a much better position as a defendant if the state government prosecutes your receipt of child pornography case.

So, I would suggest if you have one of these cases pending, pick up the phone, set up an appointment with me in the privacy of my office protected by the attorney/client privilege.  Give me all of the information related to the case, and if you do decide to hire me, I will guide you through the process and do everything I can to get you the best possible result.

Related Videos

Menu