Daddy's got child porn

Father of 2 guilty in child porn case
By Amanda Kerr The Virginia Gazette
April 16, 2008

JAMES CITY - A 24-hour delay for a search warrant may have allowed time to erase incriminating evidence against a Greensprings West father of two accused of possessing child pornography.

Nonetheless, 30-year-old Joseph Bryant Melton was convicted Monday of attempting to possess child pornography, a felony that carries up to five years in prison. Investigators were able to link Melton to the child pornography website “ProSex” through “E-Gold,” an electronic payment system.

The case took nearly three years to bring to trial.

In March 2005 Interpol notified U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforce­ment and the Postal Service about a website in Washington state that advertised the sale of child pornography. Melton’s name turned up during an investigation, and Paul Wolpert of Immigration & Customs in Norfolk was alerted.




In January 2006, Wolpert, accompanied by James City police officers, went to Melton’s home. He declined to let them inside and did not consent to a search without a warrant. Wolpert returned the next day with a search warrant and seized two desktop computers and two laptops.

On Monday, Wolpert testified that three of the computers’ operating systems had been re-installed or wiped clean overnight.

A fourth computer, which was found in a box in a crawl space in Melton’s home, did contain images of suspected child pornography and Internet searches to websites called “Lolita’s World” and “Little Girls.”

Wolpert said the fourth computer had not been turned on since 2002. Images found on the hard drive dated to 1999 and 2000. None of the images were linked to ProSex.

Melton was originally indicted on 11 counts of possession of obscene material in September 2006. After the commonwealth attorney’s office had difficulties coordinating with the attorney general’s office, which was prosecuting the case, all charges were dismissed in May 2007.

Four months later Melton was re-indicted on possession of child pornography for an image found on the computer and with attempted possession of child pornography for the apparent attempt to purchase child pornography from ProSex.

Melton’s attorney, Patrick Kelley, argued that anyone who was living with or visiting Melton could have downloaded the pornographic images.

Kelley said that aside from the electronic transfer, there was no evidence that Melton had attempted to buy videos from ProSex or that he ever downloaded videos from the website.

Circuit Judge Samuel Powell III felt there was enough evidence to convict Melton of attempted possession of child pornography.

“I suspect before those computers were cleared, they had child pornography on them,” he said. “I can’t think of any reason why he would suddenly need to clear those computers.”

Melton will be sentenced June 18.