By Alex Mcrae

The Newnan Times-Herald

LaGrange, Ga. — If it’s not a state record, it’s close.

The prosecution of a LaGrange businessman by Coweta-based Assistant District Attorney Kevin McMurry has resulted in a sentence of 1,000 years in prison.

The defendant, Peter Mallory, former owner of TV 33 LaGrange, faced 64 counts, including charges of possession of child pornography, evidence tampering and invasion of privacy. He was found guilty by a Troup County Superior Court jury on Jan. 12 and sentenced earlier this week by Coweta Circuit Superior Court Judge Dennis Blackmon.

Each count of possession child pornography carries a range of punishment of 5 to 20 years. Blackmon sentenced Mallory to 20 years to run consecutive on each of the first 50 counts for a total of 1,000 years, according to McMurry. The remaining counts were sentenced concurrently.

“This was a just result,” McMurry said. “Many people do not understand that each of the images and videos in this case depict real children, really being abused in the worst possible ways. This material is vile and people like Mr. Mallory who download, seek out and possess this material will be held accountable. I’m grateful that the jury saw this for what it was. I commend the LaGrange Police Department for the tremendous work its officers did in investigating this matter and helping to bring Mallory to justice.”

During the three-week trial, lead prosecutor McMurry and co-counsel Steven Lee presented the jury with more than 25,000 images and videos of child pornography taken from Mallory’s computers at his LaGrange television station.

Mallory maintained he acquired the images and photos due to mass downloading of movies he would use to download old movies for his TV-33 station.

After the guilty verdict, McMurry said, “If you’re looking for old movies, why would you download photographs?”

McMurry said he is not aware of a longer sentence in the state of Georgia. The longest sentence he knows of is the 2007 sentence imposed on Ryan Brandt and Jeffrey Kollie of Gwinnett County, who were sentenced to seven consecutive life sentences plus 265 years for a brutal string of armed robberies.

McMurry said a life sentence is generally counted as 100 years for these purposes, making the sentence given to Brandt and Collie 956 years, 35 short of Mallory’s total of 1,000 years.

Copyright 2013 The Newnan Times-Herald, Inc