An Essex man will be spending the next decade in prison.
On Friday, a judge sentenced Carl Javan Ross, 30, to 10 years in prison, followed by lifetime supervised release, for receipt and possession of child pornography.
The judge ordered that the federal sentence be consecutive to the state sentence Ross is currently serving for sexual abuse of a minor. The judge also ordered that, upon his release from prison, Ross must register as a sex offender in the place where he resides, where he is an employee, and where he is a student, under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA).
Ross was convicted by a federal jury on December 7, 2016, after 30 minutes of deliberation.
According to evidence presented at his trial, on July 2, 2015, an undercover Baltimore County detective was conducting an online investigation looking for offenders sharing child pornography on certain file sharing networks. The detective downloaded two video files documenting the sexual abuse of prepubescent children from an IP address later identified as being used by Ross.
Trial testimony showed that law enforcement executed a search warrant at Ross’ residence on July 28, 2015, and recovered his laptop computer. A preview of the computer showed that it contained a user hash, which is a unique value assigned by the file sharing program, identical to that of the computer that shared the two videos of child pornography downloaded by the detective. In addition, investigators found search terms indicative of child pornography and digital images of child pornography.
