SAN FRANCISCO — A Bay Area attorney who wrote he was driven to download child pornography after his wife became ill and died was sentenced to one year in federal prison last week.
San Francisco resident Michael Lawrence Connell, 67, was arrested last year after authorities discovered an estimated more than 600 digital files containing child porn during a search of Connell’s home. The youngest victims depicted in the material appeared to be 3 years old, authorities wrote in a sentencing memo.
On Aug. 27, U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg sentenced Connell to one year and one day in prison, plus supervised release for five years, and a $5,000 fine. Connell will also have to register as a sex offender. Also, the state bar temporarily suspended Connell’s legal license in August, and is seeking a permanent disbarment.
Connell wrote a 16-page letter to the court, in which he detailed his familial history — even referring to his great-grandfather being a coal miner and his grandmother surviving the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 — and describing how his wife suffered several medical issues, eventually losing the ability to move, before she died in 2015.
It was this experience, Connell alleged, that he became depressed and turned to child pornography online.
“I was isolated in a city of 900,900 people. I felt alone, and I felt lonely,” Connell wrote, later adding: “In my entire life I have never touched a child, except to show appropriate affection for my grandchildren. I never had a sexual relationship that was improper; nothing without the willing consent of the other. … What I did was limited to the internet, to the artificial reality I created.”
Authorities, though, say that anyone who seeks child pornography online is raising the demand for it, thereby giving its producers an incentive to make more. Prosecutors said in sentencing memos that some of the people depicted in the child porn found on Connell’s computer were identified, and wrote impact statements saying they continue to feel victimized by people who view the material.
“(Connell) harmed these children again when he downloaded and viewed the images depicting them,” assistant U.S. Attorney Ravi Narayan wrote in a sentencing memo, which asked for a 51-month sentence. “The sentence imposed by the court should reflect the harm suffered by these victims and the defendant’s role in perpetuating it.”
Connell’s attorney wrote a sentencing memo asking for a sentence of 1,500 hours of community service with no added jail time, pointing out that Connell had attended 200 “sexaholic” meetings and volunteered at a homeless shelter while he awaited resolution to his case.
“The State Bar is in the process of disbarring Mr. Connell. He has been shamed and humiliated, and looks forward to a life of financial uncertainty,” wrote Connell’s attorney, chief assistant federal public defender Geoffrey Hansen. “He will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of life, and has lost many of his friends directly as a result of this case.”