Kevin Etherington
(PCSD file photo)
By Patti Weaver
STILLWATER — In a heavily guarded courtroom with only a small number of observers, former First Assistant District Attorney Kevin Etherington was sentenced to a Payne County jury-recommended 20 years in prison for possessing about 155 items of child pornography on July 23, 2022, when he was living in a Stillwater apartment.
Etherington, 56, seemed detached and looked startlingly different, with white hair and a white beard, at his May 8 sentencing hearing at which he did not speak than just two months ago at his trial at which he did not testify.
On March 5, it had taken only an hour of deliberation for the jury to convict Etherington, who had been with the District Attorney Attorney’s Office for eight years as a prosecutor primarily handling homicides in Payne and Logan counties.
Etherington was fired by now-retired District Attorney Laura Austin Thomas on Nov. 28, 2022, after he was arrested by Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation Lt. Nicholas Rizzi, a member of the Oklahoma Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.
Tulsa County Assistant District Attorney Amy Dickens, who was appointed to prosecute Etherington at his trial held in Payne County, noted at his sentencing that the “jury only made it through a dozen of those and had enough.” At the trial, the judge had cleared the courtroom of everyone except the jurors and lawyers when the child pornography was shown.
The jury composed of six men and six women had recommended that Etherington be incarcerated for 15 years for possessing about 153 videos or images of child sexual abuse material and five years for possessing on his Google drive two lewd videos of children, one of whom was naked and bound.
The special prosecutor asked the judge assigned to the case to follow the jury’s recommendation and run his sentences consecutively.
Defense attorney, Mike Johnson of Oklahoma City, requested that they be run concurrently, which the judge denied.
Pottawatomie County District Judge John Canavan Jr, who had been appointed to preside at the trial after Payne County judges recused, could have placed Etherington on probation for all or part of his sentence.
In ordering that the prison terms run consecutively, the judge told Etherington, “I do think the jury thought about this. No doubt, the jury took this seriously. You’re in law enforcement and held to a higher standard. The jury determined what they thought was fair.”
The prosecutor had told the judge, “The facts supported what could have been up to 52 counts” of child pornography.
She successfully argued that while a pre-sentencing investigation report recommended a split sentence of incarceration and probation, it also added, “He has not accepted full responsibility.”
An investigation had begun on July 26, 2022, when Google submitted a cyber tip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children regarding 57 image files that depicted suspected child sexual abuse material. “The images were being stored within the Google Drive infrastructure,” an OSBI affidavit said.
“The suspect listed in the cyber tip was Kevin Etherington. The report indicate that AT&T U-verse was the Internet Service Provider, and the user was located in or around Stillwater, Oklahoma,” according to the OSBI affidavit. A search warrant was sent to Google for additional content from a Google account, the affidavit said.
“A review of that data revealed that the subscriber was Kevin Etherington,” the affidavit said. The agent “located 153 video and picture files that contained child sexual abuse material,” the affidavit said.
Throughout the trial, the defense attorney maintained that 93 people had access to the IP address and that the pornography was uploaded by a hacker in 58 minutes.
Although Etherington did not testify at his trial, jurors heard a recorded interview with the OSBI agent in which he proclaimed his innocence.
“I had no child pornography on it. Why would I do that? I don’t download child porn. I wouldn’t do that,” to which the OSBI agent said, “It’s on your drive. You tell me nobody else has access to your computer.
“Did you ever take pictures of (clothed) underage girls?” the OSBI agent asked Etherington, who replied, “It’s not child porn. That’s a fetish, bro,” on the recorded interview.
The OSBI agent insisted to Etherington, “Each one of those videos, we can tell when it was accessed. It’s gotta be you unless somebody else has access to your shit and you said no one has.
“You’ve done it and we’ve got you. I know you don’t prosecute child porn cases. I’m going to take you to the county jail. We’ll have the sheriff transport you someplace else,” the OSBI agent concluded.
The special prosecutor told the jury at the trial, “You have heard absolutely no testimony that 93 other people were accessing his account. Connect the dots. Etherington Law Firm belongs to this defendant. It’s connected to the IP address. This material belongs to Kevin Etherington.
“Every single child was a victim. That material the defendant had included (images of) raping children, ages 6 and 7,” she said in asking for a guilty verdict that the jury returned an hour later.
