Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas–An Airman Basic (Air Force E-1) found himself in pretrial confinement at the Guadalupe County Adult Detention Center (county jail) facing numerous allegations of possessing and distrubiting child pornography (also referred to as child sexual abuse material–CSAM) as well as communicating indecent language.
Mr. Tolin and his team jumped into the allegations, recognizing he was looking at 17 years of confinement for the allegations. What happened next is a sad reality in military prosecutions: the Government waited and waited to move forward, while he languished in jail.
In addition, it became clear that the Government charged this E-1 for possessing and distributing child pornography, when in reality, the only images and videos in the case file were lolicon–anime-esque sexualized drawings and videos of non-real minors. Currently, under military law, loli can be prosecuted either as child pornography (even though it is not actually CSAM, since there are no real victims), under Article 134, UCMJ, or as obscene visual depictions under 18 U.S.C. sec. 1466A, assimilated under Article 134, UCMJ. The difference in charging schemes is monumental, especially when dealing with depictions that do not actually involve real people.
Mr. Tolin and his team requested speedy trial multiple times, trying to get the case to court sooner rather than later, as the client waited and waited. Discovery issues continued to pile up, as the United States was prosecuting this client in military court and federal court but was not providing all the necessary discovery even though both cases involved the same witnesses.
Ultimately, Mr. Tolin was able to secure a plea agreement that addressed all the issues: it allowed the client to receive sex-offender treatment while serving his sentence for loli; it resulted in the dismissal of the three alleged offenses that overstated his criminal actions while providing convictions for his possession and distribution of drawings versus images of real child sex abuse victims; it allowed the client to maintain his speedy-trial objections on appeal, since he did not get to trial within 120 days of being put into jail; it allowed the client to take responsibility for his actual crimes; and it setup the opportunity for limited (or no) sex-offender registration depending on the state sex-offender registration laws due to the lesser criminality for loli versus CSAM.
With the plea agreement secured and the sentencing plan arranged, Veritas Military Law’s flat-fee arrangement that maximizes value when it is needed most allowed the client to shift resources appropriately, as he continued to face additional federal charges. The military counsel then took the battle plan to execute at sentencing, resulting in a sentence of the minimum terms of the plea agreement.