Repeat Sex Offender Sentenced to More Than 17 Years in Prison

Steve Butler, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, announced that Sam Wesley Conaway, 49, of Citronelle, was sentenced today to 210 months in prison for possession and transportation of child pornography. Conaway entered a guilty plea to both charges in March and was sentenced by Senior United States District Judge Callie V.S. Granade.

Documents filed with Conaway’s guilty plea show that he uploaded 58 videos to a remote internet file storage service, and that the videos contained child pornography involving victims that appeared to be from 2 to 14 years of age. Separately, law enforcement agents received information that Conaway was engaged in sexually explicit online chats with girls as young as 14. Conaway was a registered sex offender as a result of a 1998 conviction for child molestation in Georgia. Following a search warrant at his home, agents recovered several hundred videos and images of child pornography.

Following his release from prison, Conaway will be supervised by the United States Probation Office for the rest of his life. Conaway will also be required to maintain his registration as a sex offender.

The case was investigated by the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Sean P. Costello. It was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.