A Clarkston man arrested in an online child-sex sting was sentenced Wednesday to 13 years in federal prison.
David Elmo Curry's sentence was less than the 25 years prosecutors asked for, but U.S. District Court Judge Stanley Bastian said he was partly constrained in sentencing by federal laws setting the lowest sentence he could impose.
"This court's hands are tied," Bastian said, acknowledging a defense argument that Curry had spent more than two years on pretrial release without committing further crimes, but said he had to impose a sentence of at least 10 years on the two charges of trying to entice a minor.
But Bastian said he also recognizes that Curry was caught in a second online sex sting while awaiting trial in an earlier case.
Curry was convicted by a federal jury in Yakima in December following a three-day trial.
Craig Webster, Curry's attorney had argued for two 10-year sentences to run concurrently, followed by five years of supervised release.
Curry, 38, was one of 15 men arrested in November 2019 as part of "Operation Net Nanny," an online operation where undercover officers looked for men willing to have sex with minors and arranged for them to meet up with the children at a home in Yakima.
Prosecutors said Curry responded to a woman who was looking for a man to sexually "mentor" her 11- and 13-year-old daughters, and following instructions from the undercover detectives, arrived at a Yakima home where he was placed under arrest Nov. 16, 2019.
Curry testified that he believed he was setting up a rendezvous with an adult woman, even though prosecutors pointed out that the "mother" corrected him and said the liaison would be with her young daughters, a fact Curry acknowledged in the text exchange.
A month later, while on pretrial release, Curry placed an online ad on a meetup site looking for a woman with whom he could have a one-night stand, and he got a response from a woman who then told him she was "almost 14," according to court documents. Curry was living in Kennewick at the time.
In reality, Curry was conversing with a detective with federal Homeland Security. While Curry never met to have sex with the girl, he did go out and buy a lubricant the girl had requested.
At trial, Curry testified he knew he was talking to a cop all along but decided to string the officer along as a way to waste detectives' time and resources.
At the hearing, Bastian denied Webster's motions to dismiss the case on grounds that Curry was not communicating with minors in the one case but rather their "mother," and that the jury was not allowed to consider an entrapment argument.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Murphy argued for concurrent 25-year sentences on both cases, which he said was less than the sentencing guidelines that recommended a life sentence, to be followed by being under court supervision for the rest of his life.
Webster said Curry appeared to be a victim of "sentencing entrapment" by the decision to make the children 11 and 13 in the scenarios, which he said allowed prosecutors to seek a higher sentence than if the victim had been 14.
He said that Curry cooperated with authorities when he was arrested but appeared to be punished for taking the case to trial.
He pointed to another Net Nanny case tried in Yakima County Superior Court where the defendant was sentenced to two days in jail.
In that case, Brent Mitchell Atkins entered an "In Re Barr" plea to communicating with a minor for immoral purposes solely to avoid a harsher sentence if he had gone to trial.
Murphy said that while Curry answered questions from detectives, he was not remorseful as he went out and committed the same crime weeks later.
Webster said that Curry deserved leniency in that he is autistic, has low-self esteem and was susceptible to manipulation by others.
Curry, Webster said, had no criminal history prior to Operation Net Nanny, and in the 29 months he has been on court supervision has not broken the law.
Curry spoke at the hearing and acknowledged that he had made mistakes and regretted what he had done.
___
(c)2024 Yakima Herald-Republic (Yakima, Wash.)
Visit Yakima Herald-Republic (Yakima, Wash.) at www.yakima-herald.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
