Wichita Falls man pleads guilty to child pornography charges

Trish Choate, Wichita Falls Times Record News
·1 min read

A 35-year-old Wichita Falls man pleaded guilty and was sentenced to prison Friday in 78th District Court for possession of child pornography.

Danny Lynn Morton was sentenced to 14 years total in prison for two counts of possession of child pornography depicting a child younger than 18 engaging in sexual acts, court documents show.

Seventy-eighth District Judge Meredith Kennedy handed down a seven-year sentence for each count to run consecutively.

Danny Morton
Danny Morton

The offense is a third-degree felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Another 18 counts of possession of child pornography are expected to be dismissed as part of a plea bargain. Morton received two days of jail time served.

Kennedy also ordered Morton to register as a sex offender and pay $345 in court costs, a child abuse prevention fine of $100 and a DNA fine of $125, according to the judgement for each conviction.

Little information was publicly available in court documents about the investigation leading up to the charges that Morton was convicted of Friday morning.

Prosecutors' disclosure of evidence listed administrative subpoenas for records from Cox Communications, Google, Inc. and Time Warner Cable.

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children accepts reports of child sexual exploitation on its CyberTipline at 800-The-LOST or online at report.cybertip.org.
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children accepts reports of child sexual exploitation on its CyberTipline at 800-The-LOST or online at report.cybertip.org.

Also listed were a CyberTipline report from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, image printouts, a grand jury subpoena to Drury Inn & Suites and a subpoena response and legal response from Time Warner Cable.

On Friday morning after Morton's guilty plea, he was handcuffed and led away from the courtroom.

Morton was being held Friday in the Wichita County Law Enforcement Center, according to online jail records.

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Trish Choate, enterprise watchdog reporter for the Times Record News, covers education, courts, breaking news and more. Contact Trish with news tips at tchoate@gannett.com. Read her recent work here. Her Twitter handle is @Trishapedia.

This article originally appeared on Wichita Falls Times Record News: Wichita Falls man pleads guilty to possession of child pornography