A registered sex offender living in Norman, Oklahoma, pleaded guilty last month in federal court to a charge of producing child pornography.

Anthony Ray Sackett pleaded guilty in the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma in mid-June. He was accused of engaging in sexual activity with a 2-year-old girl early this year and using his smartphone to take pictures of the encounter. He then distributed the images over the internet via his phone.

Sackett was arrested and charged following an investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department in California.

This is not the defendant's first time to be criminally prosecuted for involvement with child pornography. In 2002, Sackett was convicted of possession of child pornography in Cleveland County. In that case, Sackett took a computer to a Cash America pawn shop. When he did not reclaim the computer in 90 days, the pawn brokers began getting the computer ready for resale and discovered downloaded images of men having sex with children as young as eight. He was sentenced to one year in prison and four years of probation. He spent a few months in prison for that charge, with a few additional months served at the end for bail jumping.

Sackett was a Department of Corrections inmate from June 2002 until October 2004 for forgery, child pornography, and bail jumping charges. In 2011, he was given a 5-year suspended sentence for failure to register as a sex offender.

In addition, he has convictions for concealing stolen property and uttering forged instruments.

Because of his prior conviction of a sex crime, when Anthony Ray Sackett is sentenced in September, he faces 25 to 50 years in prison.

The federal law regarding the production of child pornography is found in 18 U.S.C. 2251 - The Sexual Exploitation of Children. Under this law, any person who uses a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing a visual depiction of the act, whether video or still photography, is guilty of a federal sex crime punishable by 15 to 30 years in prison. If, however, the person has prior convictions for crimes involving the sexual exploitation of minors, the sentence is enhanced:

  • One prior conviction of a state or federal sex crime involving children: 25 to 50 years
  • Two or more prior convictions of state or federal crimes involving the sexual exploitation of children: 35 years to life

The United States Department of Justice indicates on its website that trafficking in child pornography in the United States had been largely eradicated by the mid-1980's, but with the advent of the digital age came the proliferation of child pornography over the internet. Just as the method of distribution of child pornography changed, so did the methods of investigation and enforcement. Dedicated task forces and initiatives, including the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces and ICE's Operation Predator, deal specifically with identifying, investigating, reducing, and prosecuting acts of child sexual exploitation including the production and distribution of child pornography.

Learn more about child pornography laws and criminal defense against child porn charges here.