SENTENCE IN CHILD PORN CASE; 52-MONTH TERM, NO COMPUTER

Scott M. Murtagh trolls the Internet for young boys interested in sex but he unknowingly solicited the same undercover policeman twice in ten months.  The great probability that he would continue to prey on the young without treatment and incarceration concerned US District Judge Alvin W. Thompson.  The plea for leniency was rejected and Murtagh was sentence to 52 months in prison.  Murtagh, not realizing he was conversing with a 41-year-old detective posing as a boy, was arrested last February at Union Station in Hartford, where he expected to pick up a

14-year old boy arriving from New Hampshire.  Murtagh was indicted by a federal grand jury on two charges: using interstate communications to entice a minor into sex; and interstate transportation of child pornography over the Internet.  He pleaded guilty in June to the latter charge as

part of a plea agreement.  Then the same detective posing as a boy again on the Internet in December, was once again solicited for sex by a Connecticut man who turned out to be Murtagh who was free on bail from his first arrest.  A sentence of a minimum 33 months in prison combined with intensive treatment was urged.  According to the Hartford Courant, Thompson's sentence of four years and four months

in prison was just five months shy of the maximum recommended by sentencing guidelines.  Thompson warned him that he would not hesitate to impose another two years in prison if he violates the terms of his supervised release: no contact with anyone under age 18; no possession or use of a computer.