PANAMA CITY — A local man has been sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison for the receipt and possession of thousands of child pornography documents.
Robert Leesean Williams, 30, was sentenced Thursday in the U.S. District Court of Northern Florida to 19 and a half years in federal prison for receiving and distributing images and videos of child pornography, some of which involved infants. Williams possessed more than 13,000 images of child pornography.
Williams pleaded with Judge Richard Smoak before his sentencing.
“I’m not a vicious person,” he said.
However, Williams nearly received the maximum penalty of 20 years after Smoak factored in a pattern of child exploitation in Williams’ past.
Prosecutors sought an enhanced sentence since Williams had two previous convictions. One of those charges stemmed from a sexual battery on a 12-year-old when Williams himself was a juvenile, to which he pleaded guilty. The second stemmed from a 2006 incident in which Williams pleaded no contest to lewd and lascivious molestation on a 15-year-old while he was 20-years-old at the time.
Williams’ defense attorney, Michelle Daffin, argued that not only were no witnesses present to testify Williams had admitted to the previous charges, but also that the two occasions did not constitute a pattern.
“This isn’t a pattern,” Daffin said. “This is conduct when Williams was a minor and an encounter between two people who consented to a sexual act.”
But prosecutors argued documentation of Williams’ admission of guilt to both incidents was enough to establish a pattern of child exploitation that led to the receipt and distribution of child pornography.
The Department of Homeland Security headed up the investigation into Williams’ child pornography
On Oct. 17, 2013, they began investigating a neighbor of Williams. The neighbor said Williams would come by often to download “movies” onto his personal USB jump drive, according to court records.
Williams would then return to his Lake Avenue home in Panama City where he stayed with his girlfriend and 5-year-old child, the neighbors told investigators. During a search of Williams’ home computer, investigators found more than 13,000 pictures of child pornography and 350 videos of preteen and infants being sexually molested.
Williams was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison. He is also facing four counts of lewd and lascivious molestation in Bay County Circuit Court.