A federal judge sentenced a former Omro alderman Feb. 20 to over five years in prison for receiving child sexual abuse material, rejecting a joint recommendation for the mandatory minimum sentence.
“There’s a lot of positives in your history and the characteristics of the defendant,” U.S. District Court Judge Byron Conway said. “But the circumstances here are, it’s very difficult to justify and stomach a mandatory minimum sentence for this type of conduct.”
Jason Reeves, 44, of Omro, pleaded guilty Nov. 21 to one federal charge of receiving child pornography. A second charge of receiving and one charge of distributing child pornography were dismissed through a plea agreement.
Reeves resigned from his position on the Omro City Council after he was arrested.
Winnebago County sheriff’s deputies executed a search warrant at Reeves’ home on April 29 after a cyber tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children flagged that child sexual abuse material had been uploaded to the messaging app Kik from an IP address which linked back to Reeves, according to a criminal complaint.
The charge Reeves pleaded to is in reference to a video he received via “a popular internet social media platform,” according to Reeves’ plea agreement.
More than 600 images were found in Reeves’ possession, Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Humble said at Reeves’ sentencing. However, Humble said, “that’s not uncommon.”
“If every video constitutes essentially 75 images, it’s very quick to get over that 600 benchmark for the [sentencing] guidelines,” Humble said.
Humble and defense attorney Eric Maciolek jointly recommended the mandatory minimum sentence of five years followed by five years on extended supervision. Both attorneys cited the fact that Reeves had no criminal history and said there was nothing aggravating about Reeves’ case.
Humble said the government typically requests the mandatory minimum sentence in child pornography receipt or distribution cases when the defendant has no criminal history and there are no aggravating factors like an unusually high volume of images or images depicting infants.
“Judge, the fact of the matter is, there’s so many of these cases and nothing really makes this an outlier,” Humble said.
Reeves sentenced to six months more than mandatory minimum
Conway questioned the government’s practice of requesting the mandatory minimum in first-offense cases, noting that one purpose in sentencing is to provide deterrence to both the defendant and community.
“The norm in this district on some of these cases is the mandatory minimum, yet, we heard these cases continue to increase and the images get worse,” Conway said. “I don’t know, is that because the sentences aren’t harsh enough?”
A sentence also needs to reflect the seriousness of the offense, Conway said. Receiving or distributing child sexual abuse material is an offense that “just shocks the conscience of any rational, reasonable human being, across the globe,” Conway said.
“If you have to read about the images as they’re described in the presentence report, it’s the kind of thing that any normal person would read and there’s actually a physical cringe reaction to it. It’s painful to read,” Conway said. “It is so deviant from normal human behavior to want to view images like that.”
Conway acknowledged that Reeves has otherwise been a law-abiding citizen in his life, has good work history, has a family and served in local government as an Omro alderman. Maciolek, Reeves’ attorney, said Reeves approached his alderman job with “an honest desire to better the community.”
Conway said Reeves’ work as an alderman was admirable, “but it also cuts the other way.”
“You’re in a position of trust in the community, somebody people are supposed to look up to,” Conway said. “And they have to see that there’s another side of you and that lets everybody down. In your family and in your community, given your position in that town.”
Conway said he couldn’t justify the mandatory minimum and sentenced Reeves to 5½ years in federal prison followed by 10 years on supervised release.
Vivian Barrett is the public safety reporter for the Green Bay Press-Gazette. You can reach her at vmbarrett@usatodayco.com or (920) 431-8314.
This article originally appeared on Appleton Post-Crescent: Former Omro alderman sentenced for federal child pornography conviction
Reporting by Vivian Barrett, Green Bay Press-Gazette / Appleton Post-Crescent
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