today by United States District Court
Judge Marvin J. Garbis to 6 years imprisonment followed by three years of
supervised release for using the internet to entice a minor to have sex with him and for possessing child pornography. The defendant was employed as a weapons designer for the Department of the Navy.
The conviction arose out of Chamber’s arrest on June
6, 2002 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in front of Panera Bakery at Columbia Mall
in Columbia, Maryland. The FBI arrested Chambers after months of "chats" between
the defendant and an FBI undercover agent posing as a 13 year old girl, during which
Chambers solicited her for sex. When Chambers was arrested, the government seized a zip
disk from him containing child pornography. A search of Chamber’s residence uncovered
additional images of child pornography that Chambers had stored on a laptop computer.
Chambers was originally tried in December 2002, which
resulted in a hung jury. At the retrial in March 2004, the government presented testimony
of other internet users with whom Chambers met online and ultimately in person, including
one woman with whom Chambers met in a hotel and had sexual relations. In addition,
although Chambers testified that child pornography was "repulsive" to him, on
cross-examination the government confronted Chambers with multiple chats in which he
either solicited, or sent, images of child pornography.
The court also required Chambers to
register as a sex offender under Maryland law as a condition of supervised release,
which the defendant is to complete after his incarceration.
This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Ari S. Casper.
