The People v. John Paul Russell

San Luis Obispo, California criminal defense lawyer represented Defendant charged with possession of child porn.



John Paul Russell (53) guilty of possession of child pornography for have at least 600 images with at least 10 of those depicting young children under the age of 12.



In June 2018, Arroyo Grande Police Department Detective Jim Jolly, while assigned as a member of the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Taskforce, received evidence that a computer in Atascadero was sharing child pornography with other computers over the internet. Detective Jolly's investigation traced the computer's internet protocol (IP) address to a business in Atascadero.



The Atascadero Police Department then obtained a search warrant and seized Russell's computer on July 10, 2018, from his place of work. After a digital forensic analysis on the computer and hard drives, thousands of images and some videos were located depicting child exploitative materials and child pornography.



"Child pornography is exploitation that causes immeasurable harm to its victims when the material is created, and again each and every time it is viewed by another person,” said District Attorney Dan Dow. "Many child molesters possess child pornography, and they often use it to desensitize their targeted victims. Aggressively prosecuting these crimes will serve to both punish individual violators and to deter others from getting involved in this form of child exploitation.”



To illustrate the extreme harm caused by the proliferation of child pornography, the following is an excerpt from an article published by the United States Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention:

Defendant was found guilty.