SF Man In Child Porn Case Killed

A 72-year-old retired attorney from Santa Fe was murdered at the California prison where he was serving a federal sentence for receiving child pornography on the Internet.

Robert A. Warren was attacked sometime before 7 a.m. Thursday at Federal Correctional Institution II in Victorville, Calif., a medium security facility housing more than 1,700 inmates, according to a news release provided to the Victorville Daily Press. He was pronounced dead just before 9 a.m.

Details about the cause of death were unavailable from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

Warren’s sole criminal conviction had generated heated discussion at sentencing about the appropriate punishment for the crime. Prosecutors sought nine years, saying Warren was more than the “passive voyeur” he claimed to be and had fueled the industry by saving thousands of child porn images.

The defense said the five-year mandatory minimum was more than enough punishment for a man with no criminal history, a history of philanthropic giving and a list of medical issues. Society would be better served by allowing him to pursue specific treatment outside of prison, it said.

Because Warren is dead, the conviction and indictment are expected to be dismissed. It’s unclear if the family could recoup the $50,000 fine he was required to pay.

A spokesman at U.S. Bureau of Prisons office in Washington, D.C., said Tuesday that the FBI handles homicide investigations in prisons.

Warren was charged in a seven-count, July 2009 indictment with receipt and possession of visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. He pleaded guilty to a single count of receipt and was sentenced in February by Chief U.S. District Judge Bruce Black to the mandatory minimum five years.

“These mandatory minimums make it impossible for judges to tailor a sentence to fit an individual, especially someone as medically fragile as Mr. Warren,” said Marc Lowry, Warren’s attorney.

Lowry said he had written the Bureau of Prisons twice to urge transfer of his client after Warren was attacked within 12 hours of arrival at Victorville. Black had recommended Warren be allowed to serve his sentence at a federal medical prison facility.

Court pleadings filed by the defense say Warren had a variety of health problems, from diabetes and neurological defects that made him unaware of the effects of his behavior.

Federal prosecutors cited recognition by the Congress, the Supreme Court and U.S. Sentencing Commission that child exploitation offenses should be punished severely, noting that the clear trend since 2003 was to increase sentences.

“The child pornography industry would not be in business if there was not a demand from … (those) willing to pay money for such images and videos,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Charlyn Rees said in a sentencing memorandum.

Warren’s plea agreement reserved his right to appeal the court’s July 2010 ruling denying suppression of evidence against him.

Warren had sought to suppress the evidence based on an argument that the search warrant affidavit used was insufficiently specific and that it contained false information about a prior arrest attributed to him that was of a different Robert Warren.

In Warren’s plea to Count 2 of the indictment, he admitted knowingly receiving a video more than three minutes long that showed a man performing sexual acts on a girl tied with ropes. Forensic examiners identified more than 2,000 child pornography images from 141 child victims.

Court documents say Warren had been identified as a subscriber to child pornography websites in seven national investigations dating back to 2002, but he was not arrested until the FBI in 2007 used a fake new child pornography website to capture the Internet addresses of those who attempted to access it.