A decorated former Fort Bliss Army sergeant once described by his lawyer as an “American patriot” was sentenced Friday\u00a0to four years in federal prison\u00a0after pleading guilty to downloading\u00a0child pornography.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Former Sgt.\u00a01st Class Michael Hall Jr., 46, was\u00a0arrested in June\u00a0after\u00a0Homeland Security Investigations agents and El Paso County sheriff’s deputies\u00a0searched his West El Paso home, officials said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hall pleaded guilty to one count of possession of child pornography\u00a0Jan. 20 in U.S. District Court in El Paso, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A\u00a0search of two laptop computers and other media found more than 23,000 images and 22 videos showing\u00a0minors in sexual conduct, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone also ordered that Hall be placed on supervised released for five years after he completes his prison sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
HSI agents had testified in a June detention hearing that Hall was “unstable”\u00a0and kept a grenade and guns at his home because he feared a foreign invasion and a\u00a0“zombie invasion.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hall’s lawyer, Randolph J. Ortega, had said that Hall was not unstable and that the grenade was locked in a safe and the guns were locked away. Hall\u00a0suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after several\u00a0combat deployments in\u00a0Iraq and Afghanistan, Ortega had said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hall was a former volunteer Boy Scouts Cubmaster about three years ago and had worked in an administrative role with no involvement in patient care at the\u00a0Hugo V. Mendoza Soldier Family Care Center at William Beaumont Army Medical Center<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hall had earned\u00a0a\u00a0Bronze Star\u00a0for heroic actions during combat and 27\u00a0other commendations, military officials said. Hall was deployed four times to Iraq between 2002 and\u00a02006 and twice to Afghanistan in 2005 and 2007.\u00a0He was also deployed to Trinidad in 2009 and Haiti in 2010.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A decorated former Fort Bliss Army sergeant was sentenced to four years in federal prison after pleading guilty to downloading child pornography.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":53929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":70,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[12,70],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2250],"class_list":["post-26018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-your-army"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"EYAVRME3HJBDLAQZTLBKPFUQNM","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-army\/2016\/04\/18\/decorated-soldier-gets-prison-for-child-porn\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n