Opinion ID: 151874
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Sentence Hearing

Text: The court began the sentence hearing, which was held on January 29, 2008, by noting that it had reviewed the sentencing memoranda, the presentence report, and Dr. Shaw's report. The first witness was Dr. Shaw. He gave his opinion that Irey has a long-standing problem with sexual obsession, and something like sexual addiction, and in American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed. text rev. 2000) (DSM-IV TR) terms, obsessive-compulsive type disorder, not the full-blown disorder, but with the sexual behavior being the most prominent feature. So far as he could tell, there was not enough evidence to diagnose Irey with any personality disorder. Dr. Shaw said that Irey is very low in psychopathy and explained that he has this encapsulated area where he was cheating, where he was lying, where he was violating laws; but outside of that, he wasappears to beto have been a law-abiding citizen. As for Irey's risk of sexually abusing children again, Dr. Shaw testified that: He's essentially in the medium low to medium or moderate risk categories, which iswhich is below a threshold of likely. The risk might be further reduced with the use of certain drugs, but he was hesitant to recommend that the court require them given all of their side effects and the fact that they're not always useful. He also noted that Irey is going to be older when and if he's released, and he's going to have experienced a reduction naturally in testosterone and a reduction in sex drive. Dr. Shaw summed up the risk situation: So overall, I find him to be, as I said, a moderate risk, a low-moderate risk, low in psychopathy. He does havehas deviant interests. Those interests, he himself has been working on reducing and are likely somewhat reduced already. They are fueled by obsessive thinking and masturbating and by the sex acts themselves. The court questioned Dr. Shaw about pedophilia, asking him: I mean, is it an illness? I mean, how would you describe that as a mental health professional? After noting that Dr. Berlin was on the committee that defined it for purposes of the DSM-IV TR, Dr. Shaw testified: I'll take my shot at it. It is a disorder of sexual interest and behavior, and you can have the diagnosis with only the interest. So you could be fascinated, sexually attracted to children and never act on it, andbut if it troubled you or caused any problems for you, you would still be diagnosable with that disorder, and that is being attracted to or engaging in behaviors, sexual behaviors, with prepubescent children. So it is clearly a well-recognized disorder, and I thought that Dr. Berlin did a good job of saying that it's not a disorder that someone chooses. It's something that is within you and you have some tendency towards it. And frankly and quite sadly, I think the availability of child images, particularly on the Internet, has fueled an epidemic of pedophilia that was kind of probably in the background, people might not have even known that they suffered from it, and then come across these images. But nonetheless, it is a treatable disorder. So it's a disorder that has different origins. And Mr. Irey talks about how the disorder manifested itself for him in his being provided with a very youngor very young prostitutes without asking for them initially; but then he found himself first repelled but then attracted to them, and that's that sort of natural biological disorder part of it that's different from the moral and ethical issues. So for another person, if they had been in the same situation, they may have been repulsed and stayed repulsed by it and, you know, notjust said, Don't ever do that again and I'm not interested; but that led him into a spiral of interest in children sexually. So that's the way that it's manifested itself here. The district court then remarked that people accuse me of not knowing what I'm talking about when I say it's an illness, and maybe I don't. That's why I'm asking you. The court continued: And I guess the question is, from a standpoint of criminology, is a person who acts out as a result of this condition acting totally of rational free will or is that person acting out as a result of something that is in essence an illness that he at that point has no control over? Do you understand what I'm saying? Dr. Shaw answered: I do, Your Honor. I think that the fact that pedophilia is not an underlying element for competency or sanityit is an Axis I, treatable disorder. Those of us who have been in the fieldI've been in the sex offender field actually since 1976; and there were pioneers in the field before me, long before me. We have been treating pedophilia for decades. It isI think that the problem that a lot of lay people have is in distinguishing between people who are disordered, seriously disordered, and curability versus treatability. Pedophilia is very treatable, and there are many pedophiles in the community who are doing just fine and managing their behavior. As I'm sure you know, probationers, U.S. probationers, are now subjected to an annual polygraph about whether they are following the rules of their probationer or whether they are re-offending. Pedophiles are capable of not re-offending, even if they have an urge, in the same way that compulsive dessert eaters can choose to not eat dessert. They have different levels of struggling, and there are aids to that: Good supervision, good treatment, replacing those needs with healthy needs. A lot of treatment is helping people understand the origin of their disorder and then teaching them to, first of all, be aware of the danger signs, the risks to relapsing, but at the same time replacing the way that they were meeting the needs met with the disordered behavior, meet them in healthy ways; and that's something people can be taught. People like Mr. Irey, who's bright, who has been successful in business, he can certainly learn the techniques that we teach to preventbe responsible himself for preventing a reoffense. It'sI think because we like to say, You can't be curedin other words, the best long-term treatment is to be alert to the problem and tothat's not a cure. Cures, you can forget about it. Just go be around kids again and don't worry about it. That, we can't do. But there are, you know, thousands of pedophiles and child molesters, different, out there, in my belief, who aren't re-offending, who are in recovery and doing just fine. The new treatments that we use are, I think, very effective. On cross-examination, Dr. Shaw confirmed for the record that Irey was a pedophile with a sexual interest in children younger than 13, prepubescent children. As for Irey's risk assessment, he conceded the study it relied on was not confined to pedophiles but also included other sex offenders. Dr. Shaw also acknowledged that he had not looked at any of the photographs of Irey's victims and did not know how many victims there were. When asked if it would surprise him to know that Irey had sexually molested over 50 children, he responded that it wouldn't because Irey did admit that he had become more and more obsessed and was returning to Asia more and more often. Other than Dr. Shaw the only people who submitted statements for, or testified at, the sentence hearing did so as character witnesses for Irey. Although they had not been willing to fully participate in family therapy with him, all of Irey's immediate family did make statements on his behalf either by video (wife, daughter, and a son) or in person (two other sons) at the sentence hearing. In his short video statement, Irey's youngest son told about his father building a clubhouse and dirt bike track. In her short video statement, Irey's daughter (age 16) described her father as loving and said that he has taught me how to be strong, respectful, honorable, loyal, and the list can go on and on. In her video statement Irey's wife of 25 years described him as a loving and wonderful husband and father who is mindful of other people's feelings. She said that he was a member of the Rotary Club, the Masons, the United Way, the YMCA, the local theater, the Shriners, and a charity called Give Kids the World. He was so good and kind that he had even rescued and taken in a stray dog. Indeed, she proclaimed that she had been very blessed to have been part of Bill's life for so many years. He's taught me so many things. After watching her video statement, the district court stated: I understand that Mr. Irey has been a good family man and has family support. Irey's oldest son (age 24) testified that his father had taught him so much about life and love and called him my hero, my star, our father. His middle son (age 20) testified that Irey had taught him to stick up for the little guy because a lot of times nobody else will, and that Irey did things to make this world what we all envision it could be. A friend of Irey's testified that Irey had used his contacts in China to help out the family of that man's wife in China. He also added that during his 32 years of law enforcement in New York City he had seen a lot of bad people and Billy Irey is not one of those people. Irey's brother testified about how Irey, when a senior in high school in 1976, had loaned his coat to an accident victim, which was typical of his random acts of kindness, and how if someone was in need, you could count on him. No one was more effusive in his praise of Irey than his nephew. He recounted how his uncle had helped get him a computer for college, had listened to him talk about his aspirations, and had helped others over the years. He proclaimed that Irey had a way of touching people's lives in a way that I've never seen before, and bring[ing] out the best in every single person that he meets. Irey is, in his view, the most spirited and the most giving person and overall is just one of a kind. He even said that: I like to think that when God created Uncle Bill, He took a step back and He said, `I'm really going to like this one.' At the conclusion of the evidence, defense counsel argued that a sentence to the statutory maximum of 30 years would be greater than necessary for Mr. Irey in light of the mitigation that's been presented. He assured the court that he was not trying to minimize the gravity of the acts with which Mr. Irey is charged, but argued that they were a compartmentalized area of his whole being that is a result of his pedophilia. He argued that Dr. Shaw's testimony and Dr. Berlin's report established that the behavior of a pedophile is not totally volitional, that is, it is dictated in some degree by the disease itself. He also argued that Irey had lived, other than this disease and this addiction, an exemplary life. Counsel cited three decisions, two from this Court and one from the Eighth Circuit, which affirmed sentences below the guidelines range in cases involving defendants convicted of distributing child pornography over the internet. [9] Counsel told the court that if Irey were sentenced to the 30-year guidelines range sentence he would be 81 years old when he got out. [10] Instead of that sentence, counsel asked the court to impose one of between 15 and 20 years here with up to lifetime supervised release. Counsel asserted that a 15- or 20-year sentence would make him 66 or 71 when he got out, if he served the entire sentence. [11] After defense counsel made his argument, the court asked if Irey wanted to say anything. In brief remarks, Irey apologized to the government agents that have had to get involved in my horrible deeds, to the federal attorney's office, to the court, to the children that I have harmed over the last several years of going to Cambodia, to his family, and to my employees, that I've pretty much hurt them. He also said: I've hurt a lot of people and I can't undo that, but I can learn from that and I'm willing to learn. The AUSA then argued in favor of the advisory guidelines range sentence of 30 years. She reminded the court that Irey is not being prosecuted for being a pedophile; he's being prosecuted for the acts that he committed. She argued that: As an alcoholic does not have to drive a car, a pedophile doesn't have to put themselves in a brothel in Cambodia, which this defendant did for years and years and years, Your Honor. The AUSA reminded the district court that the description of Irey's conduct in the Presentence Report included: writing filth on children's bodies, inserting objects into them, binding them up and tying them up, treating themposing them as trophies, and having several of them engaging in acts with him and with other children at the same time, [and] this is not run-of-the-mill child pornography . . . if there is such a thing. She stressed that this is a production case, and the defendant clearly had two different parts of his life going on; but in this one, he was the star, the writer, the director, and, at the end, a person who ruined, just absolutely and forever ruined over 50 children's lives. During her argument, the AUSA showed the court photographs of about fifty of the children taken from Irey's pink wall series; none of those particular photos showed any obscene acts or revealed private parts; they did show some of the children's faces. She pleaded with the court to look at these babies' faces, pointing out that some of these children are four or five, six years old. They're babies, Your Honor. Referring to the child pornography that Irey produced involving these same children, she pointed out that [t]heir pictures will forever be out there online. They will be victimized over and over again . . . . Their lives can never be the same. The AUSA also informed the court that when Irey was caught and the cache of child pornography he had produced was found on his computer, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children contacted law enforcement agencies, which expressed astonishment that you've found the person who produced the `pink wall' series. The series was infamous on the Internet, and is turning up even in cases now, that we're finding more and more of the pink wall series of these young children. The AUSA also pointed out that in some of the photographs, the defendant is smiling as he perpetrates this abuse. She asked: How can we square this with the stories we've heard today? How can you treat a dog better than you treat a human being, a defenseless baby? Answering her own question, she argued that [i]t makes no sense other than there's something really, really bad about the defendant. She also asked the court to consider the offense and victimization, and argued that [t]he message we send to people who would do this has to be considered. She pointed out that the defendant's conduct, according to his own admissions, was not even just child rape and child molestation, but dealing with prostitutes, lying when he doesn't have to, and stealing. She characterized him as a person who lies and steals and hurts other people. Focusing on the 1,200 images in the collection of child pornography that Irey produced, the AUSA argued that there is no better word for it than torture. She pointed out that what Irey did to the small children produced some of the most egregious images that the agents have ever seen, and Irey had been doing it for years and on many occasions and paying up to $1,500 for the rights to use particular children in any way he wanted. The AUSA concluded her remarks by asking the court to impose a 30-year sentence, the maximum the law allowed, in order to do justice for these children who cannot plead on their own behalf.