Tentative Guilty Plea In Rochester, MN Child Porn Case
Rochester, MN (KROC-AM News)- A tentative plea deal has been reached to settle a Rochester child pornography case.
The case opened this past March when Rochester Police received a cyber tip regarding 20 images of suspected child sexual abuse material being uploaded to an Adobe account. Investigators then searched the southwest Rochester home connected to the tip in late March.
Before the search the suspect, identified as 58-year-old Kevin James Hammell, had left the residence and was stopped by a Rochester Police detective who informed him of the search. Hammell eventually admitted to downloading child pornography onto a USB drive, which was found to have numerous video files of child pornography involving girls 8 to 10 years old, that was recovered during the search, according to Olmsted County Court documents.
The criminal complaint also alleges that sexually explicit images of a 6 to 8-year-old-year-old were uploaded to Hammell's Adobe account last November. Hammell was charged with five felony counts of possessing pornography depicting children under the age of 13 on March 31.
The tentative plea deal, reached earlier this week, calls for Hammell to admit to three of the counts and in exchange the prosecution will drop the two remaining counts. The agreement does not outline a specific sentence, however it does indicate the state will ask for Hammell’s confinement to be limited to 60 days if a judge grants him a downward departure from state sentencing guidelines.
A court hearing regarding the plea agreement is set for July 11.
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