Press Release
Omaha Man Sentenced to 12 Years for Possession of Child Pornography
For Immediate Release
U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Nebraska
Acting U.S. Attorney Robert C. Stuart announced Monday that Joel Palmer, 39, of Omaha, Nebraska, was sentenced in federal court for possession of child pornography. The Honorable Laurie Smith Camp, Chief Judge, sentenced Palmer to 12 years of prison. There is no parole in the federal system. After his release from prison, Palmer will begin a 15-year term of supervised release and will continue to register as a sex offender.
Palmer was convicted of possessing child pornography in 2012 in Sarpy County. He received a two-year sentence. After his release from state prison, he immediately began to download child pornography. He shared some of those images with a woman in Florida. They chatted about Palmer engaging in sexual relations with the woman’s 11- and 13-year-old daughters.
On February 16, 2017, a member of the FBI Cyber Crimes Task Force searched Palmer’s Omaha residence. Nine videos and 59 images of child pornography were found on Palmer’s devices. The videos and images involved prepubescent children, some as young as a toddler, engaged in sexual acts.
When imposing sentence, Chief Judge Smith Camp observed that Palmer’s state conviction for possessing child pornography was not sufficient to deter him from again possessing child pornography.
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 United States Attorney’s Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (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 www.projectsafechildhood.gov.
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Updated October 20, 2017
Topic
Project Safe Childhood
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