Assistant Brazos County district attorney Jessica Escue says 27 year old Preston Ray Smith will serve three consecutive ten year prison sentences after he was caught with images and videos in his Dropbox account in March of 2020.
The prosecutor said when Smith was arrested, state law gave Smith the possibility of getting probation or deferred adjudication, which would have meant serving no time.
Online court records also show Smith was indicted on 50 additional counts of possessing child pornography. Escue said those charges had to be dismissed because state law at the time had a shorter statute of limitations.
Escue told WTAW News that Smith was a student at Texas A&M at the time of his arrest. And Smith was also a children’s ministry intern at a church in a county bordering Brazos County.
Click below to hear Jessica Escue’s visit with WTAW’s Bill Oliver.
News release from the Brazos County district attorney’s office:
On Monday, April 13, 2024, Judge John Brick sentenced Preston Smith to the maximum of 10 years in prison on three counts of Possession of Child Pornography. Judge Brick ordered that these sentences be served consecutively, making the total sentence 30 years in prison.
In March of 2020, the Office for the Attorney General was notified by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that child pornography was uploaded into a Dropbox account. An investigator with the Office for Attorney General linked this Dropbox account to the defendant. A search warrant was executed at Mr. Smith’s apartment, where his computers and digital devices were seized.
Following the seizure of his items, Mr. Smith was interviewed by the investigator. During the interview, the Defendant admitted to seeking out child pornography. He further admitted to trading child pornography with others online.
During the defendant’s punishment hearing, Judge John Brick heard from Ken Sikes with the Brazos County District Attorney’s Office regarding the contents of the defendant’s Dropbox account, where Mr. Smith possessed over 2,000 sexually deviant and explicit images and videos depicting child sexual abuse and child physical abuse. Mr. Sikes also testified to the history of the defendant’s Dropbox account, which reflected the fact that the defendant had been downloading child pornography since 2016.
Judge John Brick also heard from the defense’s witnesses, including two expert witnesses who testified that the Defendant had Bipolar Disorder and, now that he was treated, he was low-risk to reoffend.
At sentencing, Judge Brick cited his concerns for the safety of children in our community and the horrifying nature of the images and videos as the reason for the maximum sentence.