A Kelso man pleaded guilty to two counts of possession of child pornography just as jury selection was taking place on Wednesday for his trial.
Robert Munger, 69, was set for a three-day trial starting Wednesday in Cowlitz Superior Court. In a search of his Kelso home in 2017, Cowlitz County sheriff's deputies found hard drives, laptops and other electronics containing pornographic images and videos of young children, according to law enforcement documents.
Munger pleaded guilty to first- and second-degree possession of depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct just after noon, ending the need for a trial and sending a packed courtroom of potential jurors home early. Prosecutors dropped another first-degree charge of the same crime. He will be sentenced on July 24.
Munger still faces charges of child rape and molestation, which will be tried in two separate cases. In one case, he is charged with first-degree child rape and two counts of first-degree child molestation. He faces a single charge of first-degree child molestation in the other case.
Those two trials will be scheduled in a court hearing Thursday morning.
All seven charges from the three cases were originally part of a single case, but Superior Court Judge Michael Evans allowed them to be separated last week because the cases involve different alleged victims.
The prosecutor's office declined to comment because the cases are all ongoing.
