PORTLAND, Maine — A Westbrook man was sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court to eight years in federal prison for possession of child pornography and perjury.
Joel Dudley, 30, also was sentenced to 10 years of supervised release, according to the court’s electronic case filing system.
Dudley was convicted in two separate trials in federal court in Portland. A jury found him guilty in February of possessing more than 500 videos containing child pornography, according to court documents. The titles of many of them indicated they depicted incestuous acts between adults and children.
In April, a jury convicted him of making a false declaration before a court, according to court documents. Jurors found that Dudley falsely testified that he had repeatedly invoked his right to counsel during an interview with law enforcement agents, but that the agents had continued to question him in violation of his constitutional rights.
After he was arrested in August 2012, Dudley told police that he had downloaded an estimated 500-600 videos of child pornography “out of curiosity,” according to court documents. The Westbrook man said he would delete the videos after viewing them, and he periodically erased his storage drive using “Department of Defense-grade” wiping software.
U.S. District Court Judge George Singal sentenced Dudley to eight years on the child pornography charge and five years on the perjury charge to be served at the same time.
Dudley faced up to 10 years in prison on the child pornography charge and up to five years in prison on the charge of making a false statement. He also faced a fine of up to $250,000 on each charge.