Navy officer who claimed PTSD in child-porn case gets 40 months

NORFOLK

A Navy lieutenant commander who claimed his service in Iraq led him to download child pornography was sentenced Friday to 40 months in prison.

John J. Hall, 39, who had served in an elite riverine unit, blamed his actions in part on post-traumatic stress disorder, a claim that the judge took into account.

The U.S. attorney's office asked for a 70-month prison term, but U.S. District Judge Mark S. Davis cited Hall's achievements in uniform when he sentenced Hall to well below federal recommended guidelines.

Hall apologized for his crime, calling it "an impulsive act."

"It's not consistent with my conservative values," he told the judge.

Hall pleaded guilty in July to one count of possessing child pornography. He admitted that he downloaded child pornography in the fall of 2006 and then again upon his return from Iraq in 2007. Authorities discovered 288 child porn images on his computer.

After serving in Riverine Squadron 1, Hall transferred to the Naval War College in Rhode Island, where he graduated in November 2008. He remains assigned there, but is awaiting administrative separation procedures, according to a spokesperson.

Hall and his attorneys argued that his obsession with child pornography began in the fall of 2006 after he completed riverine training. He was scarred, he said, from an exercise called a "pig lab" where a pig is wounded in a battlefield simulation.

He went on a brief mission to Iraq that fall, returned home, then left with his squadron for a six-month deployment in April 2007. Upon his return, he purchased a subscription to a child pornography Web site.

His wife, Darlene Hall, testified Friday that her husband was never the same when he returned.

"He was a very different person when he came back," she said. "I was waiting for my John to come back and he didn't come back."

Hall became withdrawn and distant, though he continued to work and was doing well in school. She said she forced him to see a psychiatrist, who diagnosed Hall with post traumatic stress syndrome and depression.

She called his criminal acts "inexcusable" but asked the judge to "see John for the man he really is."

Hall's attorney Franklin Swartz said Hall had no criminal record, not even a traffic ticket. He also presented pages of favorable reviews from his Navy commanders over the years.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Kosky argued that Hall may be exaggerating his mental condition, describing the defendant as a "liar, a conniver and a manipulator."

Citing PTSD as a mitigation for the crime is a "flimsy excuse," Kosky told the judge. Thousands of service members returned from Iraq and Afghanistan, some even suffering from PTSD, without resorting to viewing child pornography, he said.

In granting leniency, Davis cited Hall's "exemplary life in all other respects" and "the very unique context of the crime we have here."

Davis also sentenced Hall to 20 years of probation and ordered that he have no unsupervised contact with children, no Internet access without permission and that he undergo mental health and sex offender treatment.

Tim McGlone, (757) 446-2343, tim.mcglone@pilotonline.com