Iowa Man Sentenced to 10-Year Prison Term for Possession of Child Pornography

WASHINGTON—Nicholas Michael Jackson, 36, of Boone, Iowa, was sentenced today to 10 years in prison for possession of child pornography, announced U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen, Jr.; Valerie Parlave, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office; and Cathy L. Lanier, Chief of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD).
Jackson pled guilty in March 2013 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. He was sentenced by the Honorable Emmet G. Sullivan. Upon completion of his prison term, Jackson will be placed on 20 years of supervised release, with conditions including restrictions on Internet and computer use and contact with minors. Jackson also will be required to register as a sex offender for 25 years.
According to the government’s evidence, on July 7, 2011, Jackson communicated with a man he believed to have access to child pornography. That man turned out to be an undercover officer with the FBI’s Child Exploitation Task Force. That day, Jackson shared about 20 images of child pornography with the undercover officer in exchange for a promise that the undercover officer would share pornographic images in return, via a live webcam, of an adolescent girl. No such webcam session occurred, and law enforcement arrested Jackson the following day.
Upon execution of a search warrant on Jackson’s residence, law enforcement recovered a computer and external storage device containing nearly 100 images of child pornography.
At the time of his arrest, Jackson was a registered sex offender in Iowa. He was convicted in Iowa in 2002 of three counts of assault with intent to commit sexual abuse.
The defendant’s plea agreement resolved other potential federal charges in the District of Columbia and the Southern District of Iowa.
This case was brought as part of the Department of Justice’s Project Safe Childhood initiative and investigated by the FBI’s Child Exploitation Task Force, which includes members of the FBI’s Washington Field Office and MPD. Project Safe Childhood is a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute those who exploit children, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.
In announcing the sentence, U.S. Attorney Machen, Assistant Director in Charge Parlave, and Chief Lanier praised the MPD detectives and the special agents of the FBI Child Exploitation Task Force, who investigated the case. They also expressed appreciation for the assistance of the FBI’s Omaha Field Office, the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigations, the Boone, Iowa Police Department, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa. Finally, they commended the work of Assistant U.S. Attorneys Cassidy Kesler Pinegar, David Last, and Amy Zubrensky, who prosecuted the case.