Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
NEW YORK (AFX) - A former publisher who has served on the state's education policy board was sentenced to one year and three months in prison Friday on a charge that he viewed child pornography on his work computer.
Robert Johnson, 61, wept as he apologized before U.S. District Judge Richard J. Holwell, who cited his charitable work as a key reason why he imposed a sentence that was more lenient than the one suggested by federal sentencing guidelines and prosecutors.
The judge also fined Johnson $50,000. He had faced more than two years in prison.
In pleading guilty in August to possessing child pornography and destroying evidence, Johnson acknowledged he downloaded at least two Internet kiddie porn movies to his computer while he worked as chief executive of Bowne & Co. Inc., an international printing firm with headquarters in New York.
Johnson, a former publisher at Newsday, had also admitted that he destroyed files from his laptop and desktop computers after learning federal agents had contacted the company about the porn investigation.
As he addressed the court before the sentence was imposed, Johnson said he had moved to Michigan and embraced religion to heal himself from an online fantasy world that he had relied upon to escape depression.
He said the crimes could be traced to an "addictive behavior that destroyed my life during that period of deep depression."
The judge noted that there was no evidence that Johnson tried to speak to children in chat rooms or attempted to distribute child pornography to others, but that it appeared he was a passive supporter of a "detestable subculture."
Holwell said the evidence showed Johnson was not a pedophile, but he said a prison sentence was warranted because of the seriousness of the crime and to deter others from engaging in similar conduct.
Johnson became a target of the investigation after he downloaded material from members-only Web sites that were being monitored by federal agents because of their illicit content, the government has said.
After learning of the investigation in the spring of 2004, Johnson retired from Bowne & Co. but not before using a program called "Evidence Eliminator" to try to erase up to 12,000 files from his hard drives, prosecutors said.
He also resigned from New York's Board of Regents, which helps oversee public education in the state.
Johnson was Newsday's publisher and chief executive from 1986 to 1994. Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
Copyright 2006 AFX News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
