Emmanuel Curry Pleads Guilty to 70 Felonies
A Kenton County man pleaded guilty Friday to 69 counts of possession of child pornography and 1 count of Tampering With Physical Evidence without the benefit of a plea agreement and knowing prosecutor will recommend the maximum sentence. Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Emily Arnzen said “It’s unfortunate Kentucky law caps the possible sentence for possessing child porn at 20 years because he deserves far more!” Arnzen said some images included sexual abuse of infants so young they still had hospital bracelets on, and others included female genital mutilation. “I prosecute monsters every day, and have seen some horrific evidence over the years, but I’ve never seen anything this sick and twisted.”
Curry was arrested on February 17, 2021 after Kenton County Police executed a search warrant at his home on McCullum Pike. When police arrived, Curry threw his cell phone out the window of the home, hoping police would not find it. Subsequent search of the phone located 69 files containing the illicit images.
The police investigation began after Detective Brian Jones received a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) alerting him to someone at an IP address in Kenton County who was using known images of child pornography to search for additional images of child pornography. The process is commonly referred to as a “reverse image search.” The Bing search engine recognized the searched image from its hash value as an image known to depict the sexual abuse of a child between 2 and 4 years old.
When Jones and the other Kenton County Police detectives went to the residence where the IP address was registered, they found it was occupied by Curry and Curry’s father. Detectives seized all the electronics from the residence but did not make an arrest because they had not determined which man was responsible. Shortly after detectives arrived back at the police station, Curry’s father brought Curry in. The father told police his son had confessed to downloading the child pornography after police left the scene.
Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Arnzen refused to make any plea offers to Curry, instead telling the defendant he could pick between a judge or a jury, but she would recommend a maximum sentence either way. Curry chose to take his chances with the judge by entering a “open plea” to all charges. Formal, final sentencing is scheduled for June 6, 2022 at 9am before Kenton Circuit Judge Kate Molloy. Despite the number of counts and nature of the offenses, Kentucky law caps sentences for Class C & D felonies at 20 years. Curry faces between 1 and 20 years in prison and will have to register as a sexual offender for life, regardless of the sentence imposed. Curry must serve the greater of 20% of his sentence or until he completes Kentucky’s Sexual Offender Treatment Program, before being eligible for parole.
Posted on Monday, April 11th, 2022 @ 11:28AM
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