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John Jacques, 57, of La Crosse was sentenced in May in connection with engaging in sexually graphic online conversations last year with a Holmen, Wis., police officer who had been posing as a 13-year-old girl.
A search warrant executed at Jacques house in November recovered a laptop that contained images of children engaged in sexually explicit conduct, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Reinhard said.
At his hearing Wednesday, Jacques initially said the images were sent to his computer but he didn’t look at them, only deleted them. That prompted District Judge Barbara Crabb to ask Jacques, “and you still want to plead guilty?”
“Yes,” he replied, “I just want to get this over with.“
His attorney, Erika Bierma, said Jacques didn’t accidentally possess the images; he wanted to see what they were but never looked at them again.
“We’ll go into that more at sentencing,” Crabb said.
Reinhard didn’t disclose the number or nature of the images recovered from the laptop, but Jacques could face a longer sentence at his Oct. 29 hearing if the number of images exceeds 400 or they depict sadistic or masochistic conduct.
Jacques will face a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison due to his La Crosse County conviction and a statutory maximum of 20 years. Crabb will determine whether Jacques’ federal sentence is added to his state sentence or will run concurrent, said Reinhard.
