FARMINGTON, Utah, April 21, 2022 (Gephardt Daily) — Prosecutors took pains Wednesday to make an example of a police officer convicted on child pornography charges.
In Farmington’s 2nd District Court, Jonathan Isaac Dew, of Syracuse, a Salt Lake City police officer at the time of his offenses, was sentenced to a 1- to 15-year prison term on 13 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor.
He was convicted in March after a jury trial. The 1- to 15-year term is the maximum for second-degree felonies.
“Though many of these cases often receive a sentence of 0-210 days in (county) jail, the Utah Attorney General’s Office argued, and the 2nd District Court judge in the case agreed that a more severe sentence was appropriate,” said a press release from the attorney general’s office.
“As Assistant Attorney General Ryan Holtan argued, the aggravating factors in this case were: Dew was in a position of trust, a law enforcement officer at the time of his offenses; the content on his computer was described in court as ‘horrific’ containing images of toddlers ages 2 or 3 being raped and sodomized … Jonathan Dew used extremely sophisticated methods to cover his tracks, including advanced encryption software; Jonathan Dew has not taken responsibility for his actions.”
ICAC, the Internet Crimes Against Children task force, arrested Dew in November 2018 after serving him with a search warrant that revealed his computer held multiple files of child pornography.
Children depicted in the files were often in the same age range as his own children at the time, according to the probable cause statement in his charging documents.
