In a federal courtroom, Sean-Michael Smith, a 36-year-old Jacksonville resident, entered a guilty plea for accessing child sexual abuse materials via the internet, and now the convicted child sex offender is facing a possible prison stretch of up to 20 years. Smith's prior convictions in 2014 for distributing sexually abusive images of minors set the stage for this recent admission, which places him back under the punitive gaze of the federal justice system, as reported by the U.S. Attorney's Office, Middle District of Florida.
Adding to his past offenses Smith, who is already on the register as a child sex offender, admitted to his probation officer that he had been creating sketches of nude children and had also been using the internet for prohibited activities, although after serving his previous sentence he was on supervised release, nevertheless the transgressions led to his arrest late last year on December 18. According to the details United States Attorney Gregory W. Kehoe disclosed, the ignition for this case was sparked once Smith confessed his online activities, subsequently, law enforcement performed a search and seized incriminating data, which upon FBI investigation revealed a stockpile of illicit materials that featured abuse of young children.
Due to the gravity of Smith's charges, he's looking at no less than a decade behind bars and he's also slammed with the potential for a lifelong leash of supervised release. The sentencing, slated for this upcoming September, will provide the concluding chapter to this unsettling narrative, meanwhile, Smith remains under federal custody, in a situation starkly contrasting his previously quasi-free supervised living arrangement.
His plea enters into the continued efforts of Project Safe Childhood, a 2006 initiative that pools the strength of federal, state, and local authorities to clamp down on offenders who exploit children and to bring respite to victims - the initiative also being responsible for the investigation led by the FBI in Jacksonville, the case is currently in the hands of Assistant United States Attorney D. Rodney Brown who's handling the prosecution.
