Richmond Resident Convicted of Possession of Child Pornography

OAKLAND—A federal jury convicted David Busby of possessing child pornography yesterday, United States Attorney Melinda Haag announced. The guilty verdict followed a three-day jury trial before The Honorable Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong, U.S. District Judge.

Evidence at trial showed that on April 20, 2010, a network security analyst detected Internet traffic indicative of child pornography on the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) computer network. The Internet traffic was isolated to a single laptop computer being used by David Busby. Busby worked as a computer support employee at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL) and as a part-time employee at NERSC, which is affiliated with LBL. Busby’s laptop computer and his other work computers were confiscated. Busby made two statements to law enforcement officers shortly after the April 20, 2010 incident, ultimately admitting that he did download child pornography to two of his work computers. Busby said he would store the child pornography for a period of time and then delete the images.

At trial, Busby’s defense claimed that he accidentally downloaded the child pornography onto his computers while trying to access legal child modeling sites. A forensic examination of two of Busby’s computers recovered approximately 1,400 images of child pornography that had been deleted.

Busby, 60 of Richmond, was indicted by a federal grand jury in a superseding Indictment on July 9, 2013. Busby was remanded into custody following his conviction at trial.

Busby’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for December 17, 2013, before Judge Armstrong in Oakland. The maximum statutory penalty for each count, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(4)(B) and (b)(2), is a minimum term of imprisonment of 10 years and a maximum term of 20 years, a fine of $250,000, and a life term of supervised release. However, any sentence will be imposed by the court after consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the federal statute governing the imposition of a sentence, 18 U.S.C. § 3553.

Brian C. Lewis is the Assistant U.S. Attorney who is prosecuting the case with the assistance of Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Lin, Janice Pagsanjan, and Patty Lau. This prosecution is the result of an investigation by the Department of Energy Office of Inspector General, University of California Police Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.