Disgraced former gubernatorial candidate Eliot Cutler has been released from jail.
Cutler, 77, was released Thursday from the Hancock County Jail in Ellsworth after serving a sentence for possession of child pornography, according to a jail official.
Cutler earned a shorter sentence through good behavior, which is standard practice for all inmates, Hancock County Jail Administrator Tim Richardson said.
The former two-time gubernatorial candidate was released after spending only 33 weeks, or seven and a half months, behind bars. Had he served the entire nine months, he would have been due for release at the end of February.
Cutler pleaded guilty last May in Hancock County to four felony counts of possessing child pornography. The plea and sentencing was part of a deal reached by prosecutors with Cutler, announced in April of last year.
At his sentencing, Cutler received an overall sentence of four years with all but nine months suspended. He began serving his sentence on June 1 at the county jail because only sentences longer than nine months are served at state prisons.
Cutler also has health issues. He has a type of lymphoma that makes him susceptible to cellulitis, “a life threatening skin infection that he has experienced on five occasions and for which he has twice been hospitalized,” his defense attorney, Walter McKee, wrote last year in court documents.
McKee did not return a message seeking comment about Cutler’s release. Robert Granger, district attorney for Hancock County, said he had not yet been informed by the jail of Cutler’s release and could not comment.
Cutler is expected to serve six years of probation, during which time he is prohibited from possessing pornography of any kind or accessing the internet by any device that is not connected to an internet monitoring service that documents his online activity. He also is not allowed to have contact with any minor children except his grandchildren and their friends when another adult is present.
If he violates the terms of his probation during the next six years, he could be sent to prison for the remainder of the sentence.
Cutler also will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life, and to make a $5,000 donation to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
He wasn’t immediately listed on the sex offender registry early Thursday afternoon.
The former Maine gubernatorial candidate had 142,000 pornographic images and videos of children saved on his electronic devices when police searched his Brooklin home in March 2022, according to a sentencing memo filed by Hancock County District Attorney Robert Granger. Nearly 84,000 of those images depicted children under age 12, with some of the children as young as 4 to 6 years old, according to the memo.
Correction: Eliot Cutler will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. A previous version of this article misstated that time frame.