Professor William Garner Agrees to Recommended Sentence of 63 Months Imprisonment, $12,500 Fine, and $50,000 Restitution
SAN FRANCISCO – LAWFUEL – Law News, Law Jobs Network – United States Attorney Kevin V. Ryan announced that Dr. William T. Garner was charged today and has agreed to plead guilty to possessing child pornography. This charge is the result of an investigation by the United States Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In agreeing to plead guilty, Garner admits to the charge that he knowingly possessed visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. According to the plea agreement, Garner possessed more than 15,000 images containing child pornography, including images of prepubescent minors and images portraying sadistic or masochistic conduct or other depictions of violence. He obtained the images through the use of the Internet.
“The children depicted in these images are the victims of horrible abuse, and we will vigorously prosecute individuals possessing these materials,” said U.S. Attorney Kevin V. Ryan. “Taking sex offenders off the street and out of our neighborhoods is a high priority for the Department of Justice and our office.”
Garner, age 66 and a resident of San Francisco, is charged in a one-count information with violating Title 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(4)(B). Garner has agreed to plead guilty.
Garner is in the School of Education at the University of San Francisco. He was previously the Dean of the School of Education at USF and was the co-founder and director of the Center for Instruction and Technology at USF.
Under the terms of the plea agreement, which must be approved by the Court, Garner and the government have agreed to recommend a sentence of 63 months imprisonment, a $12,500 fine, a term of supervised release from two to five years, and restitution of $50,000 payable to the San Francisco Child Abuse Prevention Center, a charitable organization located in San Francisco.
“We know that child abuse is something a child may never outgrow so our work at the Center is to stop it from happening,” said Kathy Baxter, Division Director of the San Francisco Child Abuse Council. “If approved by the Court, we will use these funds to continue our work in educating children, their caregivers and the community about ways to prevent abuse and continue our work in improving the systems that deal with child abuse.”
The arraignment of Garner is scheduled for December 7, 2006, before Magistrate Judge Bernard Zimmerman in San Francisco. The Court has not yet set a date for sentencing. The maximum statutory penalty for violation of Title 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(4)(B) is 10 years imprisonment, a fine of $250,000, and restitution. However, any sentence following conviction would be imposed by the court after consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the federal statute governing the imposition of a sentence, 18 U.S.C. § 3553.
The information filed against Garner contains only allegations and, as with all defendants, he must be presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
Nathanael Cousins is the Special Assistant U.S. Attorney who is prosecuting the case with the assistance of Nai Saelee, legal technician. The prosecution is the result of a six-month investigation by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ICE agents were assisted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Further Information:
Case #: 06-0746
A copy of this press release may be found on the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s website at www.usdoj.gov/usao/can.
Electronic court filings and further procedural and docket information are available at https://ecf.cand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl.
Judges’ calendars with schedules for upcoming court hearings can be viewed on the court’s website at www.cand.uscourts.gov.
All press inquiries to the U.S. Attorney’s Office should be directed to Luke Macaulay at (415) 436-6757 or by email at Luke.Macaulay@usdoj.gov.
