Charles Evans Hall Jr. - Photo credit: Laurel County Correctional Center
LONDON, Ky. – A Letcher County Middle School teacher, Charles Evans Hall Jr., was sentenced on Tuesday, February 22, 2022, to 370 months in federal prison, by U.S. District Judge Claria Horn Boom, for production of child pornography and cyberstalking a student.
According to the evidence presented at Hall’s trial, Hall persuaded a child to setup a secret Snapchat account. Hall then manipulated the child into creating and transmitting sexually explicit pictures and videos. The Kentucky State Police (KSP) seized Hall’s cell phone on November 20, 2018. Thereafter, Hall used an Instagram account to engage in Cyberstalking. Additionally, Hall repeatedly requested the minor victim help him destroy evidence and threatened the child when she did not comply.
Following his arrest, Hall then bartered with his cellmate to get a co-conspirator, who was not in custody, to continue the Cyberstalking campaign against the child. Hall told the minor victim to make another statement to law enforcement to clear him of the charges.
The Court applied numerous sentencing enhancements, based on evidence of his engaging in sex acts with a minor, obstructing justice, abusing a position of trust, and being a repeat and dangerous sex offender against minors.
Hall was convicted, after a three-day jury trial, on October 20, 2021. Under federal law, Hall must serve 85 percent of his prison sentence; and upon his release from prison, he will be under the supervision of the U.S. Probation Office for Life.
Carlton S. Shier, IV, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky; Jodi Cohen, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Louisville Division; and Commissioner Col. Phillip Burnette, Jr., Kentucky State Police, jointly announced the sentence.
This case was prosecuted as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse, launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys' Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.
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