Nanjemoy man sentenced to 118 years for possession of child pornography

After a three-day trial last October, a Charles jury convicted Smith of the aforementioned charges, the state’s attorney’s office said in a release.

Between January and April of 2023, the Charles sheriff’s office received 14 cyber tips from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the release said. The reports indicated that files containing child sexual abuse material had “been uploaded to the Verizon Cloud linked to Smith’s phone number.”

Following an investigation into the reported files, detectives obtained and executed a search and seizure warrant for Smith and his residence, prosecutors said. During the search, several electronic devices were recovered.

A forensic examination of those devices revealed numerous files containing child sexual abuse material depicting children under the age of 16.

On Nov. 19, 2024, Smith was apprehended, prosecutors said. However, during the course of the investigation, detectives discovered additional files containing child pornographic material, including 28 screen recordings that were created by Smith.

At an earlier sentencing hearing for Smith, Edward Stickles, assistant state’s attorney, requested a 120-year sentence, noting that most of the videos involved prepubescent children being sexually assaulted by adults.

“These cases are not victimless crimes,” he told the judge. “The victimization of these children does not end. It continues each time someone downloads or uses these videos.”

Carrington Martin told the defendant that these types of crimes “ensures that the victimization doesn’t end but happens again and again and again.”

The judge continued that distributors and viewers are “enablers of a system that perpetuate harm” and stated that the “online exploitation of children will be met with punishment.”

For counts one to 28, Smith will face one year of incarceration for each count consecutive to each other. For counts 29 to 265, he will face six months incarceration for each count consecutive to each other, but concurrent to counts one to 28, for a total sentence of 118 years.