HAMMOND | In sentencing offenders on child pornography charges, federal authorities consider there are many degrees of child pornography, depending on the level of depravity and violence associated with the images and videos.
To better understand the severity of the child pornography in the possession of 32-year-year Thomas Scott Spangle of Lake Village, U.S. District Court Judge Philip P. Simon will review a representative sample DVD of 21 videos and 100 images in advance of Spangle’s Feb. 21 sentencing in U.S. District Court in Hammond.
Spangle, who pleaded guilty to one count of distribution of child pornography, is seeking a sentence below federal guidelines at his sentencing hearing scheduled Feb. 21. It was Spangle who actually requested the review of his porn collecting. Spangle faces a minimum of five years in federal prison.
According to federal authorities, Spangle’s cache of pornography tallied 5,269 images and 504 videos of children being sexually exploited.
“There is not one kind of child pornography,” according to documentation filed by the court Thursday in Spangle’s case. The document states there are five levels of child pornography, and that Spangle’s collection meets the highest level due to the number of images (more than 600 images) and severity of the content.
Under federal guidelines, each video counts as 75 images, the equivalent of 43,069 images, the document states.
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