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Boise man arrested on child porn charges has sex crime convictions in Idaho, Utah
Idaho Statesman - 8/12/2021
Aug. 12—The Boise man arrested for alleged possession of child pornography on Aug. 5 was previously convicted of sexual exploitation of a child and child sexual abuse, according to court documents.
In 2013, Judd Evans Ballard, 46, was convicted on two counts of sexual exploitation of a child in District Court in Ada County, according to court records. He was sentenced to a minimum of 2 years in prison and 18 years of an indeterminate sentence on the two counts, records show.
Ballard was released from prison on supervised parole in June 2017. Later that month, he pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a child in Utah and received a suspended sentence of between one and 15 years in prison, according to Utah court records. He was placed on supervised probation for three years, which ended in August 2020.
Ballard is a registered sex offender in Idaho, according to Idaho State Police records, and is still on parole.
In May, an investigator with the Idaho Attorney General's Office began examining email accounts linked to alleged child pornography, according to a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho. The accounts were allegedly linked to a phone number belonging to Ballard.
In June, an investigator did surveillance at Ballard's residence and executed search warrants of the email accounts. In August, investigators searched Ballard's residence and discovered more than 500 "images that would meet the federal definition of child pornography" on a cellphone, according to the complaint.
An AG's office news release on Aug. 6 noted that a criminal complaint is "not evidence," but rather is "a means of charging a person with criminal activity."
"A person is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law," the release said.
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