Verdict In Child Porn Trial Expected In September

CHICAGO — The fate of a Morgan Park man accused of downloading pornographic videos depicting children from the Internet now rests in the hands of a judge. Cook County Judge Colleen Hyland said she would announce her verdict next month at the conclusion of three-day bench trial for James Sonntag, 46, on 12 counts of possession and dissemination of child pornography.

Sonntag was arrested June 15, 2016, at his home in the 2300 block of West 110th Place, after Evergreen Park police officers working on the Cook County Internet Crimes Against Children task force testified that they had traced downloads of child pornography to Sonntag’s IP address. The bench trial included often dry, highly technical testimony about peer sharing networks.

Prosecutors maintain that Sonntag knew exactly what he was doing in 2016, when he downloaded and distributed videos of children being sexually exploited off the eMule sharing network. Sonntag’s attorneys argued that their client had no knowledge that child pornography was being downloaded on to his personal laptop due to the “unattended nature of eMule sharing.”

Cmdr. Mike Fellows, of the Berwyn Police Department and a member of ICAC, told the judge that a forensic review of Sonntag’s HP laptop and compiled a spreadsheet of hundreds of child pornography downloads gleaned from Sonntag’s laptop in a folder called “Jim’s Documents: Other File.” Fellows said that when Sonntag led officers to his basement office, eMule was running on his laptop.

Prosecutors also played portions of the videos, with such graphic titles as “Boys Camping Fun” and “Pedo-PTH” on a flat screen turned toward the judge’s bench. The videos’ audio could be heard in the gallery.

The defense and state also put their own experts on the stand. David Green a forensic expert the FBI’s Regional Computer Forensics Lab, bookmarked suspected child pornography after delving into the eMule logs maintained by ICAC. Green said he also examined “digital fingerprints” of files being downloaded on Sonntag’s laptop over a four-month period up until the day before his arrest in June 2016.

Defense expert Andrew Garrett, CEO of Garrett Discovery, said he analyzed ICAC investigators' handling of data from Sonntag’s laptop at the FBI’s Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory in Chicago. Garrett explained how peer sharing was facilitated by a third-party translator, which designated users as a “trusted person.” Although numerous partial download were found on Sonntag’s laptop, they could not be viewed by a user using the public version of eMule.

Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Holly Grosshaus accused Garrett of misrepresenting himself as an “expert,” stating he lied when he claimed to have testified on another child pornography cases which she had prosecuted in the Bridgeview court building. Under cross-examination, Garrett admitted that three child porn videos were found stored on Sonntag’s hard drive. He also claimed that he had “mistakenly” included an outdated resume of his expertise with his report.

Lt. Adam Zimmer, an Evergreen Park police detective and ICAC task force member was brought back to the stand during the rebuttal. He countered defense testimony that partial downloads off the eMule network could not be viewed. Zimmer explained how he searched for files using the search term “sailing” on the 2016 civilian version of eMule. Zimmer testified that he was able to view previews of the partial sailing downloads.

Zimmer testified that during his interview with Sonntag the morning of his arrest, that Morgan Park man admitted having a “morbid curiosity” about child pornography.

Testimony was also heard from Sgt. Richard Sosa, of the Evergreen Park Police Department, and James Brown, a detective for the Chicago Police Department. Both law enforcement officers were members of ICAC monitoring child pornography downloads. Sosa said that Sonntag shared nine files depicting child pornography with himself, Zimmer and Fellows before an arrest warrant was sought.

“This is a case filled with complex terms, acronyms and technology,” assistant state’s attorney Kate Foresman said in her closing argument. “But it’s also a simple case of [Sonntag] downloading child pornography and then disseminating it out into the world.”

Foresman said there was no mistake that the files shared by eMule contained child pornography, whose descriptive titles included ages of children depicted in the videos, such as "Japanese Lolita-9yo-crying-tears" "5yo [sex acts] compilation," "pigtails" and "slutty teens," when Sonntag went searching for “PTHC” — preteen hardcore.

"These videos are not just five seconds, some are 30 minutes long," Foresman said. "These are crying children that are being sent out into the world for his pleasure."

Sonntag’s attorney Jon Neulieb said his client regularly downloaded porn from eMule, but would delete the files he didn’t want and found child pornography to be "repulsive." Neulieb stated that the “unattended nature of eMule sharing” countered state arguments that Sonntag had any knowledge that there was child pornography stored on his computer. The attorney added that his client was protected by the state’s “safe harbor” law. As long as child pornography files aren’t opened and viewed, users can’t be held criminally liable.

"The state failed to prove that the files were viewed," Neulieb said.

Due to a heavy court schedule, Judge Hyland said she would announce the verdict on Sept. 9.