43
VINDY EXCLUSIVE| Child-porn guilty plea entered by Canfield man
VINDY EXCLUSIVE
YOUNGSTOWN
The prosecution is recommending a 10-year prison term for a Canfield man who pleaded guilty to 17 child- pornography counts more than 41/2 years after authorities executed a search warrant at his residence.
The delay in resolving the case stemmed from the failure of a former Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation supervisor to submit the case to prosecutors, a BCI spokeswoman said.
Paul Clymer, 69, of Colonial Drive, entered his guilty plea Friday before Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, who will sentence him at 9 a.m. April 7.
“He was involved in a peer-to-peer file-sharing network online; and BCI was actually able to download two videos from him that contained child pornography,” Jennifer McLaughlin, an assistant county prosecutor, told Judge Krichbaum.
Clymer remains free on $7,500 bond pending sentencing after he pleaded guilty to two counts of illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material or performance and 15 counts of pandering obscenity involving a minor.
The pandering charges “represent videos that were obscene that he did possess,” McLaughlin told the judge.
If the maximum penalties were to be stacked consecutively on all charges, Clymer could face 381/2 years in prison and a $105,000 fine.
Although the law allows for a possible probation sentence, Judge Krichbaum told Clymer he’d be unlikely to impose such a sentence.
“In this type of a case, with this number of offenses, it is likely that I will sentence you to the penitentiary,” the judge added.
The defense withdrew a motion to exclude from evidence statements Clymer made to police and BCI agents when they executed a search warrant at his residence May 18, 2012.
McLaughlin said BCI didn’t submit the case to her until 2016.
Jill DelGreco, a public information officer at the Ohio Attorney General’s office, which oversees BCI, said a BCI quality-assurance review last year revealed the lead bureau investigator of this matter failed to turn the case over to the county prosecutor’s office for review.
The Richfield-based special-agent supervisor, Richard K. Warner, resigned without giving a specific reason; and prosecutors got the case in March 2016, she added.
Clymer was indicted by the county grand jury Dec. 8, 2016, on 52 child-porn counts, of which the prosecution dropped 35 in the plea deal.
Although Clymer possessed and shared child pornography online, there’s no evidence he took lewd photos of any child or abused any child, McLaughlin said.
Clymer, who has no prior criminal record, will have to register as a sex offender with the sheriff every 180 days for 25 years.