This past Friday, a federal jury convicted a Juneau man of receipt of child pornography, which carries a maximum penalty of no less than 15 years in prison, according to a release from acting U.S. Attorney Bryan Schroder.
Jim Wayne Thornhill, 40, was already a convicted sex offender for sexual abuse of a minor in the second degree in 2007, where he had repeatedly sexually abused a child from the age of six to 11. An investigation from the Federal Bureau of Investigation revealed that between November 2013 and December 2014, Thornhill downloaded at least 100 images of child pornography.
When the FBI interviewed him in 2015, Thornhill said he was looking for adult and child pornography that were “just naked kids,” according to the release.
The FBI contacted Thornhill on Oct. 7, 2015, when he denied having a cellphone. The FBI learned that Thornhill’s employer found a cellphone and handwritten lists of search terms and internet addresses that were associated with child pornography. Thornhill then admitted to owning the cell phone, accessing the internet with the cell phone and writing the lists of search terms.
After that interview, and after Thornhill made his comments about searching for “naked kids,” the FBI obtained a search warrant for Thornhill’s phone that revealed the images in question. Many of them, the release states, were of “young pre-pubescent children engaged in sexually explicit conduct, including images that depicted an adult male sexually assaulting a toddler.”
The Juneau Police Department assisted in the investigation, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jack Schmidt (located in the Juneau Branch Office) prosecuted this case. The maximum penalty for Thornhill is no less than 15 years and up to 40 years in prison, a fine of $250,000, a five-year-to-life term of supervised release and a $100 special assessment.
The case was part of Project Safe Childhood, an initiative launched by the Department of Justice in 2006 to battle the spread of child exploitation and abuse.
