MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – Rory Koch, a former Minnesota GOP House worker and former candidate for Ramsey County Commissioner, was sentenced Wednesday to serve at least three years in prison after being convicted of possessing child porn.
Koch was found guilty in February of 12 counts of possessing child porn. Authorities said the case involved 68 images of child porn and an additional 58 images of child erotica.
Ramsey County Judge Edward Wilson sentenced Koch to a minimum of 40 months in prison. After that time, Koch will be on conditional release for five years. He must also register as a sex offender for 10 years after his release, and he was ordered to give his DNA to authorities.
Koch initially came under investigation in June of 2009, when AOL told authorities that a user with an AOL email account might be distributing child porn. Later, AOL provided information saying that the email account belonged to Koch.
In September of 2010, investigators searched Koch’s home with a warrant and seized two computers. Koch was present during the search, and he admitted to receiving child porn over the internet, a criminal complaint said. However, Koch said he did not intentionally distribute the porn and that he tried to delete the images as soon as he received them.
On Oct. 25, 2011, investigators received a compact disc that contained information related to the forensic examinations of Koch’s computers. It showed that several child porn images were found as attachments to emails stored on his computer and several images were located on the hard drives of the computers.
Twelve explicit child porn images on Koch’s computer were identified as depicting known victims of child porn.
In 2012, Koch entered a Lothenbach plea – where the defendant does not admit guild but does not dispute evidence presented by the prosecution.
