A Long Island elementary school custodian was charged with possession of child pornography on Tuesday, Aug. 21. 44-year-old Shawn Mead, or Patchogue, worked as a night custodian at Sayville’s Lincoln Avenue Elementary School.
Through an undercover investigation, Suffolk County Police found many digital images of children engaged in sexual activities on his personal computer. Mead turned himself into police on Monday night and was formally charged on Tuesday.
The Computer Crimes Unit discovered Mead’s collection while conducting an investigation of the online trade of child pornography. Report’s so far indicate Mead came into possession of the images online, and that he had no contact with any of the children at Lincoln Avenue Elementary School.
Mead plead not guilty at his arraignment in the First District Court in Central Islip on Tuesday. Although prosecutors asked for $200,000, he is currently being held on $5000 bail. His next court appearance is set for Oct. 17.
Possession of child porn is not so clear cut under the law in New York State. Earlier this year, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that simply viewing images of child porn online did not amount to a state crime. This contradicts federal laws dealing with child porn, which were amended in 2008 to cover all instances where internet users "knowingly accesses with intent to view."
According to the federal laws, in such a case, the defendant could be charged with receiving child pornography by computer, which carries a minimum five-year prison sentence for each image. In contrast, a defendant in New York charged with 134 counts of possession and two counts of procurement received a sentence of one to three years.
Additionally, the court found that images automatically cached on a defendant’s computer is not criminal if he/she is not aware of them. Here, state and federal law are more aligned. In 2005, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that a “defendant must, at a minimum, know that the unlawful images are stored on a disk or other tangible material in his possession."
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