BATON ROUGE MAN SENTENCING TO 57 MONTHS IN FEDERAL PRISON FOR POSSESSION OF CHILD PORNOGRAPHY

Acting United States Attorney April M. Leon announced that U.S. District Judge John W. deGravelles sentenced James S. Burland, age 70, of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to 57 months in federal prison following his conviction for possession of child pornography. Burland must serve five years of supervised release upon completing his term of imprisonment. The Court also ordered Burland to pay a $5,000 special assessment pursuant to the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act and ordered him to register as a sex offender upon his release.

In announcing the sentence, the Court described Burland’s possession of 565 images of child pornography, to include images that depicted prepubescent minors and minors under the age of 12, as serious and troubling conduct.

According to admissions made during his plea, on November 11, 2022, Burland uploaded a file containing an image of child pornography to his internet-based cloud storage account. A subsequent investigation identified that between that date and April 9, 2024, Burland possessed at least 173 additional files containing images of child pornography in his internet-based cloud storage account and on some of his personal computers and storage devices.

This matter was investigated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security - Homeland Security Investigations, Louisiana Bureau of Investigation, Office of the Attorney General, and was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Paul L. Pugliese.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse, launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice.  Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and CEOS, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims.  For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit http://www.justice.gov/psc.