Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office announced Thursday they had secured a five-decade prison sentence for a Jersey County man charged with child pornography possession in 2024.
Donald J. Herring, 58, of Piasa, was sentenced Thursday by Jersey County Circuit Court Judge Allison Lorton after pleading guilty in May to five counts of possession of child pornography, Class 1 felonies, and one count of possession of a firearm by a felon.
“Today’s sentence represents justice for innocent children and their families who are victimized each and every time one of these heinous images or videos are downloaded or shared,” Raoul said. “My office will continue to collaborate with local law enforcement agencies to protect Illinois children.”
On June 6, 2024, Raoul’s investigators, along with officers from the Brighton Police Department, Jersey County Sheriff’s Office, the Illinois State Police’s (ISP) Zone 6 and South-Central Illinois Drug Task Force conducted a search of Herring’s residence in Piasa. Herring, who was convicted in 2019 for aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, was arrested when investigators discovered a shotgun in his bedroom and evidence of child sexual abuse material on his cell phone.
According to the petition to deny his pretrial release in June 2024, these were just a few of over 100 total images/videos of child pornography found on the same device. “The Defendant has engaged in an ongoing pattern of criminal activity where he would receive links to files of Child Pornography on Snapchat and download them to his cloud storage on his cell phone,” the petition states. “The Defendant acknowledges this in his statement to the Investigator. Investigators and digital forensic examiners have so far observed over 100 image/video files of CSAM on Defendant’s cell phone,” the petition continues. “Defendant acknowledges that he has been viewing CSAM since [the] 1990’s and that he views CSAM because he finds it ‘fascinating.’” According to Riverbender, During the execution of the search warrant, investigators reportedly witnessed Herring run to the bathroom and flush what he later admitted was methamphetamine. Investigators also found a pipe with white residue in the kitchen, as well as a safe in Herring’s bedroom. He admitted that there was a firearm in the safe, gave investigators the passcode, and they seized a 12-gauge shotgun from inside the safe. The petition also cited Herring’s “significant criminal background,” including a prior charge of Received Visual Depiction of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct, transported in interstate commerce by means of a computer in a 1998 federal case from the Eastern District of Oklahoma.
Deputy Bureau Chief Shannon M. O’Brien prosecuted the case for Raoul’s High Tech Crimes Bureau.