Quote:
Former deputy given 5 years
More than 3,000 images of children were seized from his computer by authorities in a porn case.
A former Sacramento County sheriff's deputy who enforced the law by day and broke it by night was sentenced Monday to five years in federal prison for possession of child pornography.
"You lived ... a Jekyll and Hyde kind of life," U.S. District Judge Frank A. Damrell Jr. told James Edward Adamic of Folsom.
By day, the judge said, Adamic, 46, had been a good law enforcement officer, but by night had "engaged in intensive child pornography activities."
Adamic, who had pleaded guilty to possessing images depicting minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct, apologized.
"Was I wrong in what I did? Absolutely," Adamic said.
"I lost my job, I lost my career, my home, my savings," the shackled defendant said. "My wife is divorcing me.
"I've lost so much (that) when I get released, I'll never re-offend," he added.
"I can't lose any more. I have only myself to blame. I'm sorry," Adamic said.
The 20-year veteran of the Sheriff's Department was arrested Sept. 17, 2002, after the FBI served a search warrant at his home and found a laptop computer containing numerous images of minors engaged in sexual conduct, court papers said.
A few days before, Adamic had chatted online with an undercover law enforcement agent and told the agent that he had taken nude photos of underage girls and that he had had sexual contact with them, prosecutors said.
During the online chats, Adamic used a combination of letters and numbers as an alias. Investigation revealed that the screen name was registered to him through America Online.
Also seized from his home were five computer disks containing more than 3,000 child pornography images and 113 floppy disks containing about 600 images.
Defense attorney Jan Karowsky asked the judge not to impose the five-year statutory maximum sentence.
"Our position" is that the case against Adamic was one of "possession and not trafficking" in child porn, Karowsky said.
Prosecutor Laurel D. White told the court that Adamic, in his online chats with the undercover officer, was willing to sell some of his images of child pornography.
Outside the court, Karowsky said, "Although there is some circumstantial evidence of an intent to traffic, there is no evidence that (Adamic) trafficked."
Last week, Damrell had expressed his belief that Adamic might be a good candidate for the Federal Bureau of Prisons' medical facility in Butner, N.C., which hosts the bureau's sex-offender treatment program.
But Monday, Karowsky said Butner is for "predators," not for someone like his client.
In any case, Karowsky added, his client hadn't applied for admission to the Butner facility.
"Mr. Adamic, you have a terrible addiction," the judge said, berating the defendant for not coming to terms with his "dark underside" and his need for treatment.
Despite noting that Adamic might have been involved in inappropriate sexual conduct with a minor girl, the judge emphasized that Adamic's conviction was not for child molestation.
Adamic will serve his sentence either in California or in Hawaii.
Because he spent much of his career working at the Sacramento County jail, Adamic has been held without bail at the El Dorado County jail.
He was fired by the Sheriff's Department within hours of his arrest, which was part of an investigation by SAFE, the Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement Task Force.
The Sacramento-based group includes agents from the FBI, the state Department of Justice and the U.S. Postal Service, among others.
Crazy stuff... he should have been given longer than 5 years IMHO.