Sentencing delayed in federal child-porn case

A federal judge in Richmond delayed sentencing in a local child-pornography case yesterday, concerned about the rationale behind the sentencing guidelines in such cases.

U.S. District Judge Robert E. Payne reset yesterday's scheduled sentencing of James Turner Yager, 31, to Dec. 4. Yager, of Chesterfield County, was convicted twice this decade of distribution of child pornography, in 2001 and in July.

Within a year of his completion of four years in prison and three years of probation for his first conviction, he began receiving and sending child pornography. The government said he traded hundreds of images of child pornography on the Internet.

Federal sentencing guidelines, which are not binding on a judge, call for Yager to receive 235 to 293 months in prison -- in part because of the quantity of pornography involved.

"No one can support or defend child pornography," Yager's lawyer, Valencia Roberts-Brower, said yesterday. But she argued that a sentence of roughly 20 to 24 years is excessive.

Among other things, she said there is no data showing a link between the amount of pornography involved in a case and the likelihood an offender would reoffend or molest a child. She said a number of judges are increasingly sentencing below the guidelines in such cases.

Roberts-Brower asked that Yager be sentenced to 15 years, the minimum sentence allowed by law for a second such offense.

Lawrence L. Muir Jr., with the Virginia attorney general's office but serving as a special assistant U.S. attorney in the case, said Congress used studies when determining appropriate sentences in child-pornography cases.

But Payne held Muir's feet to the fire. "What evidence is there that shows a correlation between the number of images and the risk of reoffending?" he asked.

Payne cited a hypothetical case in which one offender went on the Internet once and downloaded 601 images and another who downloaded an image a day for 601 days.

"Isn't it irrational to treat them both the same?" he asked.

Payne gave Muir time to write a brief showing the basis for the guideline sentence in Yager's case, and he gave Roberts-Brower a chance to respond before Dec. 4.

Contact Frank Green at (804) 649-6340 or .