Buhl Man Sentenced To 18 Years In Prison For Child Porn Case With Over 100 Counts

TUSCALOOSA, AL — A Buhl man found guilty of over 100 counts of possessing child pornography and one count of dissemination of child porn was sentenced to prison time Monday in Tuscaloosa County Circuit Court.

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As Patch reported in September, a Tuscaloosa County jury deliberated for about two hours to convict 66-year-old Dennis Wright on the felony dissemination charge, along with 117 counts of possessing child pornography.

Wright, represented by Tuscaloosa attorney Joel L. Sogol, attended Monday's sentencing hearing wearing red Tuscaloosa County Jail scrubs and once again professed his innocence, claiming he had been set up by his ex-wife in effort to gain custody of their daughter.

The prosecution, headed up by Assistant District Attorney Thomas Marshall, requested a 20-year sentence on the dissemination charge before Circuit Court Judge Al May handed down an 18-year sentence for dissemination, along with 10 years for each count of possession.

The sentences will all run concurrently and Wright immediately stated to the court that he planned to appeal.

Before Judge May's sentence, Marshall pointed out that many argue for leniency in such cases because there might not necessarily be "a victim." But while it was not admissible at trial, Marshall said one of Wright's victims was in attendance for Monday's sentencing.

Tuscaloosa Patch has chosen to protect her identity and not use her name for this story.

Indeed, Marshall said that there is often a fear that sexual predators like Wright will re-offend once they are released back into society and mentioned "love letters" between Wright — who was 46 at the time — and the 15-year-old female victim.

"He has a type, 12- to 15-year-old girl, blond, petite, skinny," Marshall said. "[The victim in attendance] is that type."

The correspondence dated back to March 2005, with Wright referring to the young girl as "the love of my life" and writing "P.S., I can't wait for your lips."

As we previously reported, another alleged victim — Wright's former stepdaughter Jordon Rachel Leopard — came forward with a statement to Patch shortly after Wright's 2023 arrest that provided details of sexual abuse and being the victim of child pornography.

Leopard's family gave permission to Tuscaloosa Patch to include her name in this story after she told this reporter that when she and a friend were younger, Wright locked them away and took all of their communications from the outside world until they performed "sexual favors" for him.

"He took tons of nude photos of me and my friend when we were 14," she told Patch. "He always told me I was just a sex symbol, basically. It was physical — physical things happened. There is so much more, but I would like to testify."

Leopard died at DCH Regional Medical Center in Tuscaloosa on May 20, 2024.

She was 27.

As Marshall made his case for a 20-year sentence on Monday, he pointed to other identified victims, saying that of the roughly 1,800 images and 40 videos pulled by investigators from Wright's hard drive, 11 were tracked down by authorities to confirm they had been sexually abused and exploited.

Marshall also mentioned a text message thread Wright had with a female individual who told Wright about shaving her private area and feeling like "a prepubescent girl."

"That's the point," Wright is alleged to have responded.

"This is one of the worst of the worst," Marshall told the court. "He has shown that is not just about looking but a desire to act on it."

Sogol spoke first on Wright's behalf and, as was the case at trial, did not dispute that the images obtained from Wright's devices were child porn. Instead, he once again questioned the Pinterest post on Dec. 11, 2022 that prompted a tip to the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's Office from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

This tip resulted in the initial dissemination charge against Wright that subsequently led to a search warrant carried out at his home, which turned up the cache of illicit photos and videos, along with a child-size sex doll.

In regards to the sentencing, though, Sogol insisted that 20 years in prison for a 66-year-old man would, in essence, be a "death sentence."

"He's not going to live to be 86 in this prison system," Sogol said, before mentioning one of his former clients who was recently killed in the Bibb County Correctional Facility in Brent while serving time for shooting into an occupied vehicle.

Sogol then requested the sentence be reduced to 10 years before Wright was allowed to speak on his own behalf and the sentence was handed down by Judge May.

"I want to maintain my innocence," Wright told the court. "I knew nothing about these images. I didn't make the [Pinterest] upload. ... I will say, my ex-wife threatened me with losing parental rights. I never protected myself because I thought maybe there was hope for reconciliation."

Wright insisted that he was a good father to his young daughter, that he "didn't have the mind of a pedophile," and that his professional background with computers should show that he would've known better than to upload the post leading to the dissemination charge.

"I have no interest in this kind of thing," he said. "There's no way that if I was interested in this that I would make a mistake and make an upload like that. This screams of [someone else] drawing attention to me."

Wright concluded by pleading with Judge May about his age and his mother's health when requesting leniency from the bench.

"I would ask that you would have mercy on me," he said. "I've held down a career and never been in trouble."

After Judge May's sentence was handed down, Jan Livingston — Jordan Leopard's mother, who was married to Wright before his most-recent marriage — told Patch that Wright being sentenced to prison had been a long time coming.

"We have hoped that over these years Dennis Wright would finally have to answer for what he did to not just my daughter but to many others that have not come forward," she said. "This is for them, as well as for Jordon. She lived to see him arrested but passed away before she could see the final sentencing. Her passing was directly tied to the abuse caused by him. My heart breaks every day I am without her and for the struggles she went through because of him. But I do know that finally there is justice for Jordon."

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