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Pennsylvania Child Pornography Lawyers
Being accused of a child pornography crime is a serious thing. The federal government imposes strict penalties on those who are convicted of child pornography crimes. While not all child pornography crimes are federal crimes, most of them are. In order for a child pornography crime to become federal, content must have crossed state lines, which most of it does since it’s usually found on the internet.
Types of Child Pornography Crimes
There are numerous types of child pornography crimes you can be charged with. You can be charged with possession of child pornography if you have child pornography downloaded onto your computer or you’re found to be participating in the distribution market of child pornography in any way.
It also against the law to assist in the making of child pornography, and you could also be convicted of a child pornography charge if you were the guardian of a child who was the victim of child pornography and you knew about the making of the media and consented to it in any manner.
Punishments
The punishments for child pornography varies, depending upon the type of child pornography crime you’re accused of as well as your age, whether or not this is your first charge and so on. Generally, thought, for simply possessing child pornography, you could be sentenced to a minimum of one year in prison and up to 20 years in prison and up to $25,000 fine. However, if you’re charged with a federal charge of creating child pornography, you could be facing a minimum of 15 years in prison. If you’ve been convicted of a child pornography crime in the past, then obviously your consequences could be much more severe the second time around.
On top of all these legal punishments, there are also plenty of other negative impacts being convicted of a child pornography crime will have on your life. Many stigmas surround being charged with a child pornography crime. You’ll be branded a felon and a pervert, and you might not be allowed to be within a certain range of schools and other areas where many children are known to congregate. If you have any minor children of your own, you’ll likely lose custody of them, and if you’re married, your spouse might decide to divorce you. Other friends and family members might not associate with you anymore. You could lose your job, and when you get out of prison and seek a job, you won’t be allowed to work one where there are a lot of children.
Seek Legal Help Immediately
As you can see, the consequences for being convicted of child pornography go far and wide, so you’ll want to try to avoid being convicted of a crime such as this if at all possible. That’s where Pennsylvania child pornography lawyers come in. A child pornography lawyer will first evaluate all the details surrounding your case to try to determine whether or not you were lawfully arrested. If your lawyer can prove that you were not lawfully arrested, then the charges could end up being dropped.
If you lawyer cannot find that you were unlawfully arrested, then he or she can begin to work on crafting the best possible defense for you. For instance, just because child pornography was found on your computer doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re the one who put it there. It could have been maliciously downloaded by another party, so your lawyer might try to use this defense angle to fight your charges. Likewise, if you were the guardian of a victim of child pornography but you didn’t know anything about the crime, then your lawyer could argue of your lack of knowledge at the occurrence.
Even if your lawyer can’t get your charges dropped completely, he or she has the negotiation skills to work with the prosecution to try to secure you the best plea deal possible as allowed by the law.