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Patrick Joseph Bunty, 56, was sentenced Thursday to 46 months in prison for two counts of transporting child pornography and one charge of possession of child pornography.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle T. Rotella, who prosecuted the case, said she is "absolutely" satisfied with the sentence.
"The sentencing hearing in this case was almost eight hours," Rotella said Thursday. "We began at 11 o'clock and went until almost 7 o'clock tonight. So I really feel as though the judge examined everything in great, great detail."
Returning to the U.S. after a business trip to England on Jan. 27, 2006, Bunty was detained by agents of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement after they discovered images "depicting prepubescent girls nude, posed in explicit positions" on a floppy disk.
Similar images were found on a flash drive in Bunty's luggage in a directory titled "young."
Bunty, who is being held in Lancaster County Prison for parole violation, was set to be released today.
"But the judge kept him in custody," Rotella said.
He will be transferred into "into federal custody" and sent wherever the Bureau of Prisons decides, she said.
"He will not get any credit for time served," Rotella said. "The judge denied all that."
Bunty was indicted on the child pornography charge on Oct. 11, 2007, by a grand jury. He pleaded guilty Nov. 12, 2007, to one count of possession of child pornography.
At the time of his being detained in Philadelphia, Bunty was serving three years' probation on a corruption of minors charge stemming from a Sept. 28, 2004, arrest in Manheim Township.
At that time, police charged Bunty with numerous offenses including rape and indecent assault on a person younger than 13 years old and corruption of a minor. All the charges were either dropped or dismissed, however, except for corruption of a minor.
On May 17, 2006, five months after Bunty was detained at the airport, law enforcement officials conducted a search of his East Petersburg home after Judge David R. Strawbridge issued a search warrant. Agents seized 26 items from his home.
However, U.S. District Court Judge Bruce W. Kauffman had ruled in June that Bunty's previous conviction and the evidence obtained from his home would not be admissible at trial.
Bunty's attorney, Demosthenes Lorandos, insisted that neither the disk nor flash drive belonged to his client.
Bunty, who has been ordered to register as a sex offender in accordance with the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, was a pharmaceutical consultant with an international provider of management and technology services.
E-mail: lalexander@lnpnews.com
