A Faulkner County man sentenced to 20 years in federal prison after receiving a guilty plea in 2005 on distribution of child pornography was ordered to serve an additional 18 months in prison after the federal judge who sentenced him revoked his supervised release.
Richard Orville Norris II, 52, appeared Friday before U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright for a final revocation hearing after he was cited for several violations of the terms of his supervised release, including unauthorized contact with a minor, unauthorized access to the internet and viewing child pornography. Norris is described as a Level 3 sex offender at high risk of re-offending according to information on the Faulkner County Sheriff's Office website.
That website listed Norris' offense as rape of a minor, an apparent reference to a 1991 rape conviction in Faulkner County Circuit Court for which he was sentenced to serve 20 years in state prison.
According to federal court records, Norris was indicted by a federal grand jury in September 2004 on one count each of distribution of child pornography and possession of child pornography. The following February, Norris pleaded guilty to the distribution count and on Sept. 9, 2005, Wright sentenced him to serve 20 years in federal prison.
After his release from prison last November, Norris was placed on five years of supervised release, during which time he was required to have no direct contact with minors without written approval from the U.S. Probation Office, to allow monitoring on any computer or other device capable of accessing the internet, and to avoid possessing or viewing any literature or images depicting children in the nude or in sexually explicit positions.
According to a revocation petition filed May 6, the previous February, Norris -- just over three months after his release from prison -- admitted to having unapproved contact with a minor on multiple occasions. In March, the petition said, Norris admitted to having unapproved internet access by using a tablet belonging to his mother several times a week and admitted to also accessing the internet on an unmonitored cellphone. In April, according to the petition, Norris admitted that he had viewed child pornography three to four hours daily over a three-to-four day period in March of this year.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristin Bryant told Wright that she and Norris' defense attorney, Lee Deken Short of Little Rock, had agreed on a guideline sentence for Norris in the range of 12 to 18 months in prison, with Short asking Wright to sentence his client to the low end of 12 months and Bryant asking for an 18 month sentence.
Short said it was important for Norris to be able to resume individualized sex offender treatment as soon as possible, which he said was beginning to show signs of progress.
"The court has previously recognized the importance of sex offender specific treatment," Short said. "That's why this court and other courts have often authorized and even required individuals to go through that treatment because, A, it's needed and, B, it works. The problem is that Mr. Norris was early in his treatment."
Short argued that indications were the treatment was working -- that Norris was attending counseling sessions and was availing himself of the treatment, but "he just didn't get very far."
"Like any person suffering from an illness or an addiction, he needs that treatment," Short continued. "I'm asking the court to consider a 12-month sentence so that he can return to treatment sooner rather than later."
"What about treatment in the Bureau of Prisons?" Wright asked.
Short said treatment while in prison was problematic for a couple of reasons. One of those, he said, is the lack of personalized treatment customized for each individual offender and the other, he said, is the lack of real world stimuli that can inform the offender of the progress being made.
"Being tempted and then receiving treatment, there's actually a feedback that's going on," Short said, of treatment outside of prison. "Being in the Bureau of Prisons ... you're not having to deal with those motivations."
Norris said the treatment in prison was more geared toward groups and no individual therapy was offered.
"I asked for specific treatment for me and they said they didn't have the time or the place to do it, that they had to treat everyone exactly the same," Norris said.
Wright appeared troubled by the short span of time between Norris' release from prison and the onset of the violations that resulted in him being brought back into court.
"You had a sentence of 240 months in prison," she said. "That's a really long sentence, really long. And now you're out and you've fallen off the wagon. I'm just really trying to figure out what is best."
Wright said only part of the goal of sentencing has to do with punishment, that it also has to consider rehabilitation of the offender and the protection of society at large.
"I'm struggling with it because he did this over a period of time and knew that it was wrong," she said. "I'm trying to figure out what would be best to meet the sentencing goals."
Short pointed out that the contact Norris had with the minor was not physical and that the child's mother had given permission for her child to be there.
"It wasn't that my client invited the child over," Short said.
Arguing for an 18-month sentence, Bryant acknowledged that Norris had spent many years in prison but said that did not justify a low-end sentence being appropriate under the circumstances.
"He did receive a substantial sentence of 240 months and based on the violation paperwork he served a little over 16 years in prison," she said. "Within three to four months he had violated again. He was around a child, he was looking at child pornography. ..."
In addition, Bryant said, Norris went to the trouble of obtaining an internet capable cell phone and wiping it in an attempt to prevent the probation office from seeing its browsing history.
"This is a particularly difficult matter because he served so much time for the underlying offense and then got out and started violating again," Wright said as she announced the sentence.
In addition to 18 months in prison, Wright ordered Norris to serve an additional five years on supervised release -- to run concurrently with the unexpired term he is currently serving -- and she gave him credit for time served in federal custody since his arrest May 11.