Supreme Court decision leads to reduced sentence for molester

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  • Supreme Court decision leads to reduced sentence for molester
    Supreme Court decision leads to reduced sentence for molester
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A defendant serving time for child molestation and sexual exploitation of children had his sentence essentially cut in half due to a Supreme Court ruling on a similar case.

Michael Thomas Day was back in Jones County Superior Court July 14. Day was requesting a new trial, and Assistant District Attorney Cara Fiore said all the issues were resolved with the exception of the multiple images of child pornography.

Day was sentenced May 30, 2019, to 40 years with 38 years to serve for two charges of sexual exploitation of children following a two-day trial.

Fiore said the Supreme Court ruling required the sentences for the two charges to merge. At the July 14 proceeding in front of Superior Court Judge Terry Massey, Day was resentenced to 19 years to serve with one year on probation.

The prosecutor said, however, district attorneys objected to the ruling and successfully lobbied for a new statute in Georgia. She said child abuse and pornography offenses committed after July 1 can now be sentenced separately.

According to the Georgia Department of Corrections website, Day was sentenced to 20 years for child molestation in Baldwin County June 5, 2012, and released on parole Sept. 16, 2016. Day was living in Jones County and was required to register as a sex offender.

He was arrested Oct 10, 2017, for exploitation of children after child pornography was found on his home computer during a routine home inspection. That arrest was the reason for the 2019 trial.

Witnesses at the trial included the probation officer charged with Day’s supervision after he was released from prison and former Jones County Investigator Clay Wiggins for the state.

Probation Officer Jesse Gibbs testified to his Oct. 10, 2017, visit to Day’s residence on Folendore Road. He said the presence of several child sized, anatomically correct dolls raised his concern.

Gibbs said he called the Jones County Sheriff’s Department and requested Wiggins to come to the residence to check the probationer’s computer.

During his testimony, Wiggins said because the computer was running slowly at the residence, he brought to the Sheriff’s Department. The witness said he downloaded the images on Day’s hard drive and found 117,000 of them. He said that included 28,000 images of child pornography.

The jury was shown 105 of the images as a representation of what was found on the computer. All of the pictures were of little girls.

Wiggins said the pictures showed the dates the files were downloaded and saved in file folders on Day’s computer. The testimony of the investigator was a painstaking process to show that each picture was downloaded from a child pornography website and saved on the sex offender’s computer.

The jury was also shown pictures of Day and his girlfriend that were found on the computer to establish his ownership and ability to use the device.