Sentence For Man Convicted of Sending Pornographic Pictures of 9-Year Old Daughter Upheld

Living with your 9-year-old daughter in a trailer in the yard of a tow-truck lot isn't causing great bodily harm, but taking lewd pictures of her and distributing them over the Internet certainly is -- and will be in the future, a federal appeals court has ruled.

George Clair, 39, is serving a 59 years-to-life sentence for sending pornographic pictures of his 9-year-old developmentally-disabled daughter over the Internet, according to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. He isn't denying that he did it -- but he did try to convince a judge that some of the 46 felony counts of which he was convicted should be thrown out on technicalities.

One was that there was no proof that the photo shoots were "likely to cause great bodily injury or death." Another was that three felony counts were very similar to others, the newspaper reported.

Cops found hundreds of images of Clair's daughter on a computer hard drive and on cameras found in the trailer. Clair was convicted in 2009 after a two-week trial after his Internet service provider turned him in.

The court ruled that great injury was caused by the mental and emotional grief the photo shoots caused to the child. The court also ruled that every e-mail with pornographic pictures sent was a separate crime.

If Clair was looking for mercy, he committed the wrong crime.