Eric Hartley, 37, was a teacher at Fort Mill High School in Fort Mill, SC used various internet applications, including Kik and Dropbox, to send and receive child pornography. One of the individuals with whom Hartley traded child pornography was Jeramy Routh, who pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute child pornography in May.
Routh and Hartley discussed trading exploitative images of children, including infants and toddlers, and did in fact exchange images and videos as well as access to cloud based accounts of child pornography.
Hartley faces a mandatory minimum of five years in prison and a maximum penalty of 20 years when sentenced on September 27. Actual sentences for federal crimes are typically less than the maximum penalties. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after taking into account the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
