Now, if only we could arrange to have what he did tattooed on his forehead before entering prison...
Burnsville man gets 750 years for creating child pornography
Pioneer Press wrote:A Burnsville man was sentenced to 750 years in prison for creating at least 29 pornographic images of prepubescent girls in his basement.
The tip-off that helped investigators put him away: a Brownie uniform in the background of one of his photographs.
The sentence handed down to Bruce W. Betcher in U.S. District Court on Monday is believed to be one of the longest in U.S. history for the manufacture and possession of child pornography.
In May 2006, Betcher, 53, was convicted after a weeklong jury trial on 24 counts of manufacturing child porn, one count of receipt of child porn and one count of possession of child porn.
In sentencing him Monday, Judge James M. Rosenbaum, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, called Betcher's crime "an utterly unconscionable act," according to a statement from the U.S. attorney's office.
"There are some crimes for which there is no excuse," Rosenbaum said.
The 750-year sentence took even some seasoned defense attorneys and federal law enforcement officials aback. Authorities were attempting to determine if it was a new record for a child pornography case.
"Have I ever heard of a longer sentence in Minnesota? The answer is no. Nothing like that," said Earl Gray, a St. Paul attorney whose major practice is in federal court. "(Rosenbaum) is usually pretty fair."
And I'd just like to make sure this little gem was in here...
Gray said Betcher could appeal his sentence, but he said he was not likely to gain much sympathy from the federal appeals courts in Minnesota.
"If you appeal the sentence to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, they'll probably give him 1,500 years," Gray said. "They're tougher than Rosenbaum."
I actually laughed out loud reading that.
