Bad Bad Teacher

(11/06/07 – Initial BBT Report)

Todd C. O’Brien, a former band instructor at Kingston High School, in Kingston, New York has pleaded guilty in federal court to a charge of possessing child pornography, a felony which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Sentencing is currently set for O’Brien on February 26 in U.S. District Court in Albany.

This case dates back to May 2001 when town of Ulster police began investigating an allegation by a female student at the school that O’Brien initiated sexual contact with her. As part of that investigation police searched O’Brien’s personal computer and allegedly found child pornography.

Town of Ulster Police said they found 31,000 photographs in the computer, many of which depicted girls that appeared to be between 12 and 16-years-old in sexual situations.

In January 2003 O’Brien was indicted by an Ulster County grand jury on 49 criminal counts including charges of promoting an obscene sexual performance by a child, possessing an obscene sexual performance by a child, promoting a sexual performance by a child and possessing a sexual performance by a child, obscenity, endangering the welfare of a child and sexual abuse.

Following his indictment, O’Brien reportedly pleaded guilty to three felony counts of promoting an obscene sexual performance by a child, 12 felony counts of promoting a sexual performance by a child and a single misdemeanor count of obscenity. O’Brien reportedly admitted that he had intentionally downloaded, saved and revisited the pornographic images. As a result of his guilty plea, O’Brien was sentenced to six months in jail, 10 years probation, and was ordered to register as a sex offender.

In December 2003, O’Brien’s conviction was overturned by a state appellate court, which ruled that Kingston detectives, working with the town of Ulster police, acted improperly in seizing a home computer on which the pornographic images were found.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office took up the case in May 2006 and a federal grand jury indicted O’Brien on a federal charge of possessing child pornography. In August a federal court ruled that police had acted properly, and O’Brien subsequently agreed to enter the guilty plea deal with federal prosecutors.

2/26/08 – Sentencing

Today, Todd O’Brien was sentenced to twenty-seven months in federal prison for possession of child pornography.

O’Brien will also be required to serve three years of supervised release following his prison term and he will be required to register as a sex offender.

References:

Former high school band director sentenced for kiddie porn possession (2/26/08)

Former Kingston music teacher sentenced to prison for having child porn on his computer (2/26/08)

Child porn charge sticks (11/06/07)

Background:

Court nullifies child porn plea by ex-teacher (1/01/04)

Suspended teacher faces 49 charges in child porn case (1/03/02)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 4:04 pm and is filed under Band/Music, Hall of Shame, High Schools, ME-CP, New York. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.