Justices decline Montgomery County child pornographer’s appeal of 420-year sentence

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear the appeal of a Burtonsville man serving 420 years in federal prison for child pornography.

Kyle Stephen Thompson had urged the justices to review and overturn his conviction, stating through counsel that his videotaping of three preschool girls was not the “prevailing” purpose behind his sexual abuse of them.

Without comment, the justices let stand a lower court ruling that the federal child pornography statute’s prohibition on coercing children into sexually explicit behavior “for the purpose of” creating a video of those acts does not require that the video production be the defendant’s prevailing motive for the coercion...

...Investigators detained Thompson and obtained a search warrant of his home, where Montgomery County officers found a memory card hidden in the laundry room, according to testimony...

... “Based on the evidence at trial, the jury could have rationally concluded that Mr. Thompson sexually abused the child victims and created video depictions of the abuse, but that he did not sexually abuse the children to create the videos,” added Mercer, of RaquinMercer LLC in Rockville. “For precisely this reason, it was crucial for the district court to adequately instruct the jury on the meaning of ‘for the purpose of” to ensure that Mr. Thompson, who disputed no other element, had a fair opportunity to present his defense.”..

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