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Maine Man Gets 14 1/2 Years for Child Pornography

By Mark Wilson, Esq. on May 04, 2015 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

Another day, another child pornography appeal. This time, Timothy Majeroni is appealing a 2012 conviction for child pornography, which occurred when he was already on supervised release for a previous conviction for -- wait for it -- child pornography.

Majeroni tried to throw everything he could at the wall, but nothing was going to stick. That's how these cases go sometimes.

There's Nothing Behind the Curtain

Majeroni is no stranger to violating supervised release, either. He did that in 2004 and 2007 following a 2001 child porn conviction. He also failed to register under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) in 2008. Then he violated his supervised release again in 2012.

As a result of the most recent violation, he was required to wear a GPS monitor and not "access the [I]nternet or possess a computer without prior approval from his probation officer."

When probation officers paid Majeroni a visit in November 2012, they noticed what appeared to be "a laptop power cord, plugged into the wall and coming out from behind the desk." Probation officer Kristin Cook asked if Majeroni had a laptop. He said no, and claimed the power cord "was for his television's remote control."

Sure it was.

A search revealed, naturally, that Majeroni had a laptop computer and a cable modem. You've got one exactly guess what the probation department found on the laptop.

A Flurry of Objections

A jury convicted Majeroni of possessing child pornography, and the district court imposed the fairly incredible sentence of a consecutive 150 months and 24 months (that's 14-and-a-half years), plus lifetime supervised release.

The First Circuit didn't think too much of Majeroni's trial objections. It found that admitting evidence of his prior guilty plea to possessing child pornography wasn't prejudicial.

Notably, even though the trial court granted a motion to limit discussion of why Majeroni was on supervised release, the evidence of why he was on release, and its general terms, came out during trial. Defense counsel declined to request a limiting instruction, finding that the evidence didn't "seem to have a big splash during trial," but Majeroni argued on appeal that the supervised release evidence "tainted the jury," which of course it didn't.

Finally, Majeroni claimed that he didn't know there was child pornography on the laptop, basing the argument entirely on the fact that "his romantic partner claimed that she had never seen him use a laptop." That didn't convince the First Circuit that the jury couldn't have convicted him beyond a reasonable doubt.

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