Etowah County Man Found Guilty of Receiving and Possessing Child Pornography
| U.S. Attorney’s Office June 17, 2010 |
BIRMINGHAM—A federal jury Wednesday convicted PHILLIP ROSS SIMMONS, 57, of Altoona, for receiving and possessing child pornography, U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance announced.
U.S. District Court Judge L. Scott Coogler ordered U.S. Marshals to take SIMMONS into custody following the verdict. A sentencing date has not been scheduled. SIMMONS faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison, and a maximum of 20 years, for receiving images of child pornography. He also faces a maximum of 10 years in prison for possessing or accessing the images with the intent to view them.
SIMMONS was convicted on charges brought in a May indictment. The indictment charged that he received pornographic images of children via the Internet from February 2008 until February 2009. He also accessed other images of child pornography, intending to view them.
The case was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service. Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel J. Fortune is prosecuting the case.