SPOKANE, Wash. - The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the convictions of Craig Morgenstern, 49, who was found guilty of sexual abuse of a child and several child porn production related charges in 2016.
The court upheld his sentence of 12 life terms of imprisonment for his crimes.
Morgenstern faced 35 charges including Sexual Abuse of a Child, Production of Child Pornography, Possession of Child Pornography and Travel with Intent to Engage in Illicit Sexual Contact with a Child. He was convicted on 34 charges. Lawyers said one count was thrown out because the victim did not want to testify.
He was arrested in October 2014. Court documents said he is accused of assaulting numerous kids between 2008 and 2014 in Washington, Idaho, Mississippi and Tennessee.
Morgenstern appealed his convictions to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, but they rejected all of his arguments, noting "[t]he jury was presented with an overwhelming amount of digital evidence that depicted Morgenstern performing sex acts on the victims."
"This crime is a horrible crime," U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington Michael Ormsby at the time of the trial. "It's hard to imagine a case that's worse than this when you think about the age of the victims, they're vulnerability, and typically the victim of trust that the perpetrator is in with those victims, so I think that this case for a jury is also very difficult because in order to convict you need to look at the evidence and this evidence is pretty horrific."
