Man guilty of child porn in prison

Missourian was in Forrest City lockup when crime occurred

A Missouri man accused of possessing child pornography while he was serving a fiveyear sentence in federal prison on a previous child pornography possession charge faces a minimum of 10 years in prison after he was found guilty by a jury Wednesday after a two-day trial in federal court in Little Rock.

It took just over three hours for the jury of six men and six women to reach a decision in the case against Douglas Turner, 42, of House Springs, Mo., an unincorporated community about 30 miles southwest of St. Louis. Jurors heard from five prosecution witnesses, including a correctional officer, a former Bureau of Prisons investigator and the FBI agent who initially interviewed Turner.

Turner appeared in court accompanied by his parents and by his attorney, Grant Ballard of Clarendon. Representing the government were U.S. attorneys Kristin Bryant and John Ray White. Hearing the case was Chief U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr.

When the verdict was announced, Turner paled noticeably and grimaced before putting his face in his hands briefly. His mother, sitting in the gallery, began to cry.

Turner was indicted in November 2019 on one count of possession of child pornography in connection with an incident that occurred more than two years earlier, on Oct. 23, 2017, while Turner was serving a 63-month sentence at FCC-Forrest City — a federal correctional complex — for a child pornography possession conviction in a federal court in Missouri.

According to testimony by Skyler Sanders, a correctional officer at FCC-Forrest City’s low-security unit, at 1:20 a.m. on Oct. 23, 2017, as he was conducting rounds he saw Turner acting suspiciously.

“That night I was doing a security round,” Sanders said, “I was coming down and seen an inmate sitting on his top bunk with a blanket on top of him and a light emanating from under it.”

Sanders said he asked Turner what he was doing, at which time, “the light went off and he started shuffling around underneath the blanket.”

“I asked him what he was doing and he told me nothing,” Sanders recounted. “He said he was just reading a book and handed me a book and a light, and I told him to hand me what he had moved around because he had clearly put something down.”

After denying that he had anything else, Sanders said, Turner finally handed him a cellphone. At that time, Sanders said, he turned Turner and the phone over to another correctional officer. Under cross-examination, Sanders said he never saw the contents of the phone and did not check to see if it was powered up. He also admitted to Ballard that he had not personally seen Turner using the phone.

“I saw him with the illuminated light under the blanket,” Sanders said.

Former Bureau of Prisons investigator Byron Flint testified that cellphones are a highly sought-after item in prison that can sell for as much as $3,000 and are often rented by inmates to other inmates. Flint described what he found when he surveyed the contents of a memory card that was in the cellphone taken from Turner. He did not check the contents of the phone itself, he said, because the phone was password-protected.

“There was what appeared to be under-aged children doing different things in the pictures and the videos,” he said. “I stopped because I didn’t want to look any more.”

At Bryant’s urging, Flint — who seemed clearly uncomfortable — described one video that he did see while searching the phone.

“There were two girls standing there and they would like, maybe, rub their hair or do something and then they would look off to the side,” he said. “It’s like someone was telling them to do this and they would turn back and maybe rub the other one’s face or something, stuff that I just didn’t think was right.”

Questioned by Ballard about the layout of the unit where Turner was housed, Flint said although inmates are not allowed outside of their units, they do have some freedom of movement inside the unit and that it would be possible for one inmate to toss an object into another inmate’s cubicle.

Asked how many cellphones had been found at the prison since 2017, Flint said, “hundreds would be accurate.”

“So cellphones aren’t rare in prison, are they?” Ballard asked. “In Forrest City.” “No,” Flint replied. Former FBI forensic examiner Tim Whitlock testified that he extracted the contents of the phone’s SIM card and a 16 gigabyte external memory card and discovered images and videos of child pornographic material.

Whitlock walked the jury through the process of extracting information from the cellphone, which he explained was done through imaging software that would copy the contents without altering the files it was copying. On the memory card, he told the jury, he had found a number of user-generated folders labeled as “dug,” “Jeff,” and “John.”

He said the file named “dug,” which contained 30 videos depicting child pornography, was created on Oct. 22, 2017, at 5:21 a.m., less than 24 hours before Turner was discovered with the phone in his cubicle.

FBI Special Agent Lenny Johnson, who interviewed Turner on May 10, 2018, at the prison, told Bryant that Turner had told him he borrowed the phone from an inmate known as “Trapper John,” and later identified as John Gool, who at that time was serving a 20-year sentence on a child pornography conviction.

“At first he said he didn’t know who he borrowed it from but later he said he borrowed it from Trapper or Trapper John,” Johnson said. “He stated he borrowed the phone to do child pornography.”

Asked why it had taken nearly seven months from the time of the offense for Johnson to interview Turner, Johnson said there was no real urgency.

“Mr. Turner was in custody and to my knowledge wasn’t going anywhere,” he said.

After the verdict was announced, Marshall ordered Turner to be taken into custody to await sentencing, which he said will be scheduled in a few months after completion of a pre-sentencing report. Ballard had requested that Turner be allowed to remain free until sentencing but was denied.

“There are cases where I have discretion about releasing someone pending sentencing and there some where I do not,” Marshall said. “I believe this is a case where I do not.”

Turner was allowed to briefly walk to the gallery to hug his parents.

“You stay out of trouble,” his mother said, hugging him tightly and crying. “Do everything right. Stay strong.”