Our firm has assisted many clients facing child pornography and sexual exploitation charges in federal courts across the United States. Federal child pornography offenses generally fall into two categories: 1) non-production cases involving the possession or distribution of child pornography or 2) production cases involving the actual creation of child pornography.

Both categories of offenses carry significant penalties including decades to life in prison, and our firm has obtained successful outcomes for clients in both kinds of cases.

Many of our clients in these kinds of cases contact us immediately after being approached by law enforcement or having a search warrant executed at their home or business. If we are hired early enough in the investigation, we try to push the government to not pursue criminal charges. In other cases, we have been successful by filing motions to suppress challenging the government’s search warrants and coerced statements obtained through aggressive interrogation of our clients. We have also gotten cases dismissed by obtaining evidence that the alleged “child pornography” doesn’t actually feature any minors engaging in sexual conduct.

In federal child pornography cases that involve a sentencing hearing, we have obtained probation and other successful outcomes for clients, including sentences well below the federal sentencing guidelines. Our sentencing advocacy has been praised by judges based on our innovative and statistically driven arguments that judges can, should, and often do, sentence first offenders below the guidelines in child pornography cases.

We have successfully represented clients in federal criminal cases across the United States. Our firm has its main office in Atlanta GA, and we frequently travel to other federal courts to represent people in serious federal criminal cases.

“It isn’t hyperbole to say that because of Tom Church I am here and able to write this review. Despite statistically facing near certain time in prison for my charges, he was able to successfully negotiate a probationary sentence. Not only was the outcome incredibly rare, but it was also achieved far from Tom’s home state… Criminal cases are often the worst times in a person’s life, it was for me. If I could give any advice to someone in a similar situation it would be to say your prayers and go to Church.” – J.C. (Manhattan, NYC)

“After talking to Mr. Church I felt a ray of hope. Mr. Church actually listened to me and what had happened. He was able to review my case and within 24 hours informed me that the case against me had been mishandled. Within two months I went from possibly going to jail, or a lifetime being as a convicted felon to having the case dismissed and looking at possible retribution against the individuals and organizations that had accused me of a crime I had not committed….” – N.C. (South Georgia)

What is “child pornography” under federal law?

Under federal law, child pornography is any “visual depiction” of a minor engaging in “sexually explicit conduct.” A visual depiction is basically a picture, video or digital image in print or stored on an electronic device, like a computer or phone. Contrary to many state laws, a “minor” under federal law is anyone under 18 years old.

“Sexually explicit conduct” includes a variety of sexual activity including intercourse, masturbation and “lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area” of any person. Mere nudity can be considered “sexually explicit conduct” if the nudity is sexually suggestive.

What are the different kinds of federal child pornography charges and their penalties?

Most charges involving possessing or downloading child pornography are brought under 18 U.S.C. § 2252 and 18 U.S.C. § 2252A. These statutes criminalize possessing or accessing with intent to view child-sexual-abuse material (CSAM), as well as receiving, distributing, transporting, or reproducing it—especially over computers, phones, or peer‑to‑peer (P2P) networks.

The penalties for non-production child pornography offenses can be severe and depend on the conduct. Possession of child pornography typically carries up to 10 years in prison. Receipt or distribution of child pornography commonly carries a 5‑year mandatory minimum and up to 20 years in prison. The penalties for non-production offenses are higher, and often involve a mandatory minimum prison term, for defendants who have prior child pornography convictions or possess materials that are sadistic, violent, or portray very young victims.

Production offenses carry even more severe penalties are charged primarily under 18 U.S.C. § 2251, which punishes using, persuading, enticing, or coercing a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing a visual depiction. A conviction for producing child pornography under § 2251 carries a mandatory minimum 15 years in prison and up to 30 years, with higher ranges for defendants with prior convictions.

Related child pornography production offenses include 18 U.S.C. § 2251A (selling or buying children for production) and 18 U.S.C. § 2260 (production for importation into the United States). Mandatory minimums for these offenses are even more severe than typical production cases, as the prison sentences under § 2251A and § 2260 can reach 30 years to life in prison.

There are also fines and restitution payments that are often required to any identifiable victim of the offense. Not to mention, being convicted of a child pornography offense in federal court will require registration as a sex offender.

What are federal charges for sexual exploitation of minors and their penalties?

There are several federal criminal offenses that are similar to those involving child pornography, such as those involving minors engaging in sexual conduct. While not as common as child pornography charges, prosecutors often bring these charges along with child pornography charges because they carry long prison sentences. These offenses include the following:

• Coercion and Enticement under 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b) involves using the internet or other interstate means to persuade, induce, entice, or coerce a minor to engage in unlawful sexual activity; attempts are chargeable. A conviction under § 2422(b) carries a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years in prison.

• Transportation of Minors and other similar offenses under 18 U.S.C. § 2423 are aimed at transporting a minor for illegal sexual activity and sex tourism. Transporting a minor carries a mandatory sentence of 10 years in prison, while most other offenses under this statute have no minimum but carry up to 30 years in prison.

Unlike most sexual exploitation and child pornography charges in federal court, it is a defense that the defendant did not know the victim’s age, though the defendant must prove their lack of knowledge by “clear and convincing evidence.”

• Sex Trafficking of Children under 18 U.S.C. § 1591 involves recruiting, harboring, transporting, or obtaining a minor for a commercial sex act. There can be a mandatory minimum of 10 or 15 years depending on the age of the victims or if force, fraud, or coercion was used.
• Transfer of Obscene Material to Minors under 18 U.S.C. § 1470 involves sending obscene matter to someone under 16 via mail or interstate/foreign commerce and carries up to 10 years in prison.

While every case is different, non-production child pornography cases usually begin with a cyber-tip from an online platform, such as Facebook or Dropbox, or a referral to NCMEC, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. These platforms often have an algorithm or process for flagging materials that appear to be child pornography.

NCMEC does not generally independently verify whether the image in question is child pornography, though NCMEC does have a database of known images and can sometimes determine if the material has previously been confirmed to be child pornography. If the image has not previously been identified, NCMEC refers the case to law enforcement agencies.

A tip from NCMEC is usually followed by a federal agent’s subpoena to internet service providers (ISPs) and, ultimately, a search warrant for the residence, cloud account, or electronic devices of the suspect.

Investigators often conduct a knock‑and‑talk interview during the search, sometimes even at the suspect’s kitchen table. The interview is not about finding out the truth—these investigators are only interested in getting the suspect to admit they possessed or downloaded child pornography.

Prosecutors frequently charge possession alongside receipt or distribution counts that carry a 5‑year mandatory minimum to leverage a plea to the possession charge.

What are the defenses for possession of child pornography charges?

Possession is generally prosecuted under § 2252 and § 2252A. As noted, penalties for possession charges can be up to 10 years (higher with certain aggravators like the age of the victim or the nature of the content, or if the defendant has prior convictions).

Key defenses to possession charges include challenging whether the files legally qualify as “child pornography,” whether the person knew the files were present on their devices, and whether the files were saved only temporarily (e.g., thumbnail or browser caches) without the user’s knowledge or intent to view. We also scrutinize the forensic methods used to identify the files and tie them to a specific user.

There is a narrow and rarely available defense to possession under § 2252A(a)(5) which applies when a defendant possessed less than three images and took prompt steps to destroy the image or report it to law enforcement.

In terms of mitigation, our firm has obtained remarkably low sentences in federal child pornography cases, including probation, by providing statistics and information from the U.S. Sentencing Commission supporting lower sentences for defendants with no priors who have been convicted of possession-only charges.

What are the defenses for distribution or receipt of child pornography?

Receipt and distribution typically carry a 5‑year mandatory minimum and up to 20 years under § 2252A (and overlapping provisions in § 2252). In the age of computers and the internet, most child pornography possession cases involve some form of receipt or distribution. Whether the government can prove the specific facts around the receipt or distribution is a different story.

The government often tries to use logs from Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks or records from other platforms to show that a defendant’s child pornography files were downloaded or shared with others. Defenses are fact‑specific and may include disputing whether any files were actually transferred, whether auto‑share settings in P2P software caused files to get uploaded (distributed) without the user’s awareness, and whether the material meets the statutory definition of CSAM. These arguments are narrow and must be supported by careful forensic analysis.

What are some other non-production child pornography offenses and their penalties?

Advertising/Pandering and Access-With-Intent-To-View offenses under 18 U.S.C. § 2252A separately criminalize the “advertising, promoting, presenting, distributing, or soliciting” material to cause another to believe it contains illegal child pornography, as well as mere access to child pornography with the intent to view.

Advertising/pandering under § 2252A(a)(3) can be punished as severely as receipt/distribution, with a five-year mandatory minimum. A conviction for access‑with‑intent‑to‑view under (a)(5) is often sentenced similarly to possession.

Sexual exploitation of minors is a separate category of federal crimes that covers the production of child pornography and similar conduct. These charges carry some of the most severe prison sentences available in federal court. They are also fact-specific, and the available defenses depend on the nature of the allegations and evidence that can be obtained.

What are the defenses for production of child pornography?

Production charges under 18 U.S.C. § 2251 are brought when person attempts to induce, persuade or entice a minor to engage in a sexual act for the purpose of making a video, picture or other image is guilty of sexual exploitation under federal law.

Production offenses also include charges under § 2251A for selling/buying children for the purposes of producing child pornography and under § 2260 for production of child pornography to import into the U.S.

As with other federal child pornography laws, a “minor” means anyone under the age of 18. In production offenses, “using” a minor or engaging in a sexual act with a minor is interpreted very broadly by courts—even taking picture of a minor sleeping nude or a selfie of the defendant engaging in sexual acts around a sleeping minor have been upheld as “child pornography” in production cases.

A person can be prosecuted for sexual exploitation even if all of the conduct occurred outside of the United States. To prosecute someone who is accused of producing child pornography in a foreign country, the government must prove that the person intended to send or make available the child pornography to people in the United States.

As discussed above, the penalties for sexual exploitation under federal law are incredibly severe. The mandatory minimum sentence for basic production offenses is 15 years in prison, and the maximum is 30 years. For buying/selling minors or producing child pornography for importation, the minimum sentence is 30 years in prison.

In child pornography cases, the recommended sentence under the Guidelines, and the reasons why a judge may impose a harsher or more lenient sentence, usually depend on the number of images or videos that the person possessed or distributed, the age of the minors in the images and the type of sexual conduct shown. There are also enhancements for people who have engaged in a pattern of similar conduct even if the person has never been previously charged or convicted of a sex crime.

The available defenses to production charges center on whether the alleged victims depicted was a minor, whether any “lascivious exhibition” is depicted under the statutory standard, whether the depiction was produced for the alleged purpose, and whether any incriminating statements by the defendant or evidence were obtained in violation of the Constitution. Intent, jurisdictional elements, including whether the material was produced or traveled interstate or in foreign commerce, and the reliability of digital evidence are frequently contested.

What are the defenses in other sexual exploitation of minors cases?

As noted above, there are other types of sexual exploitation of minors cases besides production of child pornography. These offenses and their penalties and defenses include the following:

Coercion and Enticement (18 U.S.C. § 2422(b)): Frequently charged where communications involve grooming or attempts to meet a minor. Defenses may include challenging the government’s evidence of the defendant’s intent, impossibility where no minor exists (though “sting operations” still allow liability for “attempted” crimes), and entrapment by law enforcement.

Transportation of Minors (18 U.S.C. § 2423): Includes transporting a minor or traveling with intent to engage in unlawful sexual activity. Defenses may involve challenging the evidence of intent (or lack thereof), proof of the alleged victim’s age, and the interstate/foreign commerce element.

Sex Trafficking of Children (18 U.S.C. § 1591): Defenses against these charges focus on the offense’s knowledge elements, challenging whether any “commercial sex act” occurred, and attacking the credibility of cooperating witnesses.

Transfer of Obscene Material to Minors (18 U.S.C. § 1470): Defenses typically examine whether the material is legally “obscene,” the age of the recipient, and whether the defendant engaged in “knowing” transmission.

Defending someone charged with a child pornography or sexual exploitation offense can be extraordinarily difficult. Our firm, however, has been successful in many of these cases by challenging the government’s evidence on a few critical elements.

The most obvious defense to these charges is that the person depicted in the film or image is not a minor. We have consulted with pediatricians and other medical experts to review images to show that the person being depicted may very well be 18 years old.

We also look at the evidence in the case to determine if the images actually show “sexually explicit conduct” as defined under federal law. Many times, the government has collected images showing nudity but not the type of sexual activity prohibited by the law. Images commonly referred to as “erotica” are not necessarily images of child pornography.

In almost every case where our clients are investigated or charged with child pornography or sexual exploitation, we obtain the assistance of some of the best computer forensic experts in the country. A good computer forensic expert can help us determine if the government has properly conducted a search of the computer and other electronic devices to locate the evidence.

Our experts will often show that these images may not have been knowingly possessed by the person being charged and, if they had been inadvertently obtained, were quickly deleted or destroyed.

Our experts can also help us show that any child pornography images may have been mistakenly downloaded when the computer has a significant amount of adult pornography that is otherwise legal. We can also have our experts focus on specific internet search terms to show that our client was not intentionally searching for child pornography.

In some cases, we have been able to show that the tips or leads the government receives cannot conclusively show that it was our client’s computer that was offering images for distribution. This is also true in many of the undercover operations the government conducts when agents are trolling the internet and various networks trying to find child pornography to download.

Most federal child pornography cases these days involve the use of peer-to-peer networks and software, including Gnutella, Ares, BitTorrent and similar networks. We are also now seeing cases involving the TOR network, which the government has recently been able to access and investigate. In a few recent cases, our experts have been able to show that our client’s computer may have been maliciously accessed and used by these networks to allow the distribution of child pornography without our client’s knowledge.

Federal child pornography and sexual exploitation charges are incredibly serious, frightening and difficult to defend. Our firm has years of experience in successfully representing people across the United States who are charged in federal court with possessing, downloading, distributing or producing child pornography.

Although we most often represent clients in cases where we are “lead counsel,” we can sometimes assist people who may be experiencing the stress of a federal criminal case for the first time and would like a “second opinion” about the strength of the government’s case. For these clients, we share our expertise in federal child pornography and sexual exploitation cases with the client and the client’s current lawyer to help them make what is often a life-changing decision about accepting a proposed plea agreement or taking the case to trial.

In addition to helping our clients win favorable resolutions or “not guilty” verdicts in federal child pornography and exploitation cases, we also assist clients in federal criminal appeals, sentencing hearings and grand jury investigations involving related allegations.

If you or someone you know is currently facing child pornography or sexual exploitation charges in federal court, give us a call and we will let you know if we can help.