CEDAR RAPIDS – An Iowa man who admitted he was addicted to child porn after he was discovered to be in possession of children’s underwear as well as thousands of images depicted child pornography had his prison sentence affirmed by a US appeals court.
On April 12, 2011, as the result of an online undercover operation, state and federal officers conducted a search of 37-year-old Anthony Boyd Conklin’s Davenport residence. Law enforcement officials seized and searched Conklin’s computers. The search disclosed a child pornography collection consisting of thousands of images and hundreds of videos and involving minors ranging in age from three to seventeen years old. Conklin admitted to possessing the prohibited images and videos. In addition to accumulating a large child pornography collection, Conklin chatted with a twelve-year-old girl and recorded web camera footage of the child engaging in sexual conduct on at least three occasions. On another occasion, he took screen captures of a thirteen-year-old girl engaged in sexual conduct. After the seizure of the computers in 2011, but before completion of a forensic analysis of their contents, Conklin acquired two new computers to replace those that were initially seized by law enforcement. He continued to view and download child pornography. He was arrested in 2012 and again admitted to his criminal behavior. Law enforcement attributed more than 8,000 images and 900 videos of child pornography to Conklin.
A district court later sentenced Conklin to 240 months’ imprisonment, followed by ten years of supervised release. Conklin appealed the sentence, saying it was too harsh and that he should be in treatment due to his addiction to child porn instead of being sent to prison.
A US appeals court ruled in June that Conklin received the statutory maximum sentence, which was more than four years below the a guidelines recommendation. “Taking into account the characteristics of the crime and the offender, we hold that Conklin’s sentence is not substantively unreasonable” the court said in its ruling.
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