FARMINGTON – A Biddeford man pleaded guilty to two counts of misdemeanor possession of sexually explicit material of a minor today in Franklin County Superior Court, conditional on pending appeals of constitutional issues. He was sentenced to 270 days in jail, with credit for time served.
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Keith Nadeau, 20, of Biddeford, pleaded guilty to two counts of possession of sexually explicit material, Class D misdemeanors. The arranged plea and sentence stemmed from an agreed disposition created by Assistant District Attorney Andrew Robinson and Nadeau’s attorney, Michael Cunniff, in which a felony charge of possession of sexually explicit material was dismissed.
Nadeau was sentenced to 270 days in jail on the first possession charge, which he has already served, and a suspended sentence of 270 days on the second charge. He will face a year of probation, with requirements that he attend counseling, have no access to the Internet beyond what is permitted by a probation officer and be registered on the Sex Offender Registry. He is also not permitted to have any unsupervised contact with children under the age of 16 and furthermore, contact with children under the age of 14 must be supervised by a family member.
Nadeau was a student at UMF in December 2007 when, according to campus police, he showed another student material which reportedly was pornographic in nature and involved minors of an uncertain age. Cunniff raised constitutional issues with both the search of Nadeau’s computer and flash drive, as well as questioning of the student by campus police. His motions to suppress the evidence and statements were denied by Justice Michaela Murphy at a hearing earlier this year.
In the months following the Dec. 17, 2007 arrest, Nadeau’s bail was amended to have supervised incidental contact with children. This was to allow Nadeau to help out at a children’s summer dance camp in Winthrop. While at that camp, Nadeau was arrested after allegedly exposing himself to a 13-year-old boy. He pleaded guilty to indecent conduct, a misdemeanor, in Kennebec County Superior Court on Dec. 10, 2008. Sentencing was deferred until the disposition of the Franklin County pornography charge.
According to Cunniff, the conditional guilty pleas allow Nadeau to file appeals on Murphy’s decision. In court today, Murphy stressed that the pleas were contingent on a final judgment from a higher court.
“If the appeal is unsuccessful then you would have two misdemeanor counts,” she told Nadeau, who indicated he understood.
There are several legal questions associated with this case. Cunniff said he intended to appeal Murphy’s ruling, saying that campus police searched Nadeau’s computer and flash drive with an expired search warrant and did not have his client’s consent. Cunniff also intends to argue that Nadeau was not properly given his Miranda rights when campus police questioned him in his dorm room.
At the hearing in February, the officers and Robinson argued that Nadeau was never actually in custody, and therefore did not need to be Mirandized. They also stated that Nadeau gave them consent to search his computer and voluntarily wrote a confession.
Another issue, had the case proceeded to trial, could have been the age of the individuals depicted in the explicit material. While minors under the age of 12 would equate to felony possession of sexually explicit material, minors under the age of 16 would equate to the misdemeanor version of the charge. Cunniff said he would have argued that experts could not determine the age of the individuals in the material beyond all reasonable doubt.
“I have never seen a more complicated set of legal questions than I have seen in this case,” Cunniff said.
Nadeau has 10 days to file an appeal on decisions related to the case. The Winthrop case sentencing is not anticipated to further impact Nadeau, as Kennebec County District Attorney Evert Fowle indicated in December 2008 that the arranged plea in the indecent conduct matter included a 90-day jail sentence cap.
