Online child porn convict from Smith sees reduced sentence
A Smith Township man who was convicted of having images and videos of children having sex with adults and animals earned a sentence reduction Monday in federal court in Pittsburgh.
U.S. Judge Donetta Ambrose cut a little more than two years off the sentence of Christopher Welshans, 42, who was convicted three years ago of possessing and distributing materials depicting the sexual exploitation of a minor, a federal official confirmed.
U.S. marshals removed Welshans’ relatives from the courtroom Monday after they became disruptive over assumptions Welshans was going to be released from federal prison.
Margaret Philbin, spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Scott W. Brady, said Ambrose reduced Welshans’ sentence from 151 months to 121 months. The resentencing resulted from an appellate court decision that Ambrose was wrong when she enhanced his sentence on prosecutors’ claims that he obstructed justice in the case.
Welshans was initially arrested in March 2014 on state charges after an undercover officer with the state attorney general’s office connected to his computer while it was being used at a relative’s residence in Hanover Township, federal court records show.
Investigators learned that Welshans lived at 48 Perkins Lane and used his relative’s Comcast account to access the internet at her home.
The attorney general’s office, along with police in Smith, served a warrant March 21, 2014, at Perkins Lane, where they found Welshans to be combative, court records indicate.
“I am a citizen of nowhere and/or no one,” Welshans said that day, according to court records.
He also told officers that he was antigovernment, and that if child porn were to be discovered on his computers it would have been planted there by the government.
The search produced more than 10,000 images and 200 videos of young children involved in sexual conduct with adults.