Three decades and huge (record?) restitution sentence in federal child porn case from Texas

A helpful reader alerted me to what seems like a record-setting sentence handed down yesterday in a notable federal child porn prosecution out of Texas.  This local article about the sentencing provides the details:

Misty, a victim of child abuse that began when she was 4 years old, wrote that there is another “little me” being seen on the Internet by child pornography abusers.  Prosecutor V. LaTawn Warsaw read the young woman’s victim impact statement during the sentencing of Robert Hedrick, 61, the former president of Pan American Airways, who was convicted in May of five counts relating to child pornography.

U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen sentenced Hedrick to 30 years in prison and ordered him to pay more than $5 million in restitution to known victims of child pornography whose images of abuse were found on Hedrick’s computer....

The government had asked for a 90-year sentence, but Hanen said because of Hedrick’s age a 30-year sentence was appropriate....

Investigators identified 99 known series of child pornography, along with 549 known images of child victims on Hedrick’s computer — just a fraction of the more than 2,400 images and 18 videos of child pornography it held.  Many of the children in the images are unidentified, Homeland Security Investigations Agent Joseph Baker testified....

Hedrick maintained his innocence.  “I can’t ask the court for anything.  I was framed.  I didn’t do what I was charged and convicted of,” he said, adding that he can’t say he is sorry or show remorse for something he didn’t do. Hedrick plans to appeal....

During the trial, however, evidence showed that Hedrick shared 136 images of adult and child pornography with detectives who were posing as 13- and 14-year-old girls.  According to testimony during the trial, Hedrick contacted the undercover investigators in Louisiana and Wisconsin through Yahoo instant messenger and email more than 20 times.

He also was convicted of asking the agents to provide him with images of themselves in sexually explicit sex acts.  The government introduced a web cam video of Hedrick masturbating for an undercover detective who identified herself as a 14-year-old girl from Louisiana....

Here is a breakdown of the victims to whom Robert L. Hedrick was ordered to pay more than $5 million in restitution....

• $3,388,417 to the victim of the Misty series;
• $1,145,300 to the victim of the Jan-Feb series;
• $803,924 to the victim of the Vicky series;
• $68,821 to the victim of the Cindy series.

Much can be said, of course, about the imposition of 30 years' in federal prison for a man in his 60s for what he did on the internet.  (Recall that now-infamous child molester Jerry Sandusky got a state sentence of 30-60 years.)  I find even more noteworthy that federal prosecutors could, with a straight face and as officers of the court, assert in this sentencing proceeding that they believed that only a 90-year federal prison term(!) was "sufficient but not greater than necessary" to serve the purposes of punishment set forth by Congress in 18 USC 3553(a).

In addition, the restitution amount imposed here is higher than I can recall seeing in any other child pornography case and thus may set a record for this kind of prosecution.  Moreover, unlike in many other child porn downloading cases, it seems possible that this defendant could pay some or perhaps all of this huge restitution amount. This reality not only raises the stakes for this defendant's planned appeal, but also potentially impacts whether and how the victims in this case will want or need to seek additional restitution awards from other child porn downloaders in future federal prosecutions.