Molester downloaded 20,000 pornographic images of children.

Molester gets 520 years for kid porn
A former Texas A&M administrator ordered last month to serve 100 years in stacked sentences for child molestation will instead serve 520 years, a judge and new jury decided Thursday.

It took the jury about 45 minutes to hand Brian Lancaster the maximum sentence and fines for 100 counts of possession of child pornography and two counts of promotion of childpornography.

The fines -- $10,000 for each charge -- amount to more than $1 million.
The sentences -- 10 years each for the possession charges and 20 years for the promotion charges -- would have amounted to 1,040 years if served back to back. But it was up to 272nd District Judge Rick Davis to decide if they should be served concurrently -- amounting to a 20-year sentence -- or consecutively. Davis opted to split the difference.

The new sentence will run concurrently with last month's 100-year term.Lancaster, a doctor of educational psychology who served as assistant director of A&M's Study Abroad program, was arrested on campus in January after two sisters taking piano lessons with his wife reported being abused. During a search of his home, police seized computers that contained videos of the sisters and two other girls being molested. In addition, police found more than 20,000 downloaded pornographic images of children.

Last month, Lancaster pleaded guilty to seven counts of child molestation and asked a jury to assess his punishment. But he declined at the last minute to plead guilty to the other 102 counts, forcing prosecutors into a position of either dropping the additional charges or trying them at another time.

During heated closing arguments Thursday that rehashed old courthouse rivalries, defense attorney David Barron argued that the right course of action would have been not to waste taxpayer money piling on the extra charges. He accused prosecutor Shane Phelps of seeking a headline that would please his ego instead of justice. "How far can the state beat this man down?" he asked, reminding jurors that Lancaster received a $50,000 fine last month in addition to the 100-year sentence. "He's lost his wife, he's lost his children, he's lost everything.

"This is like giving the death penalty to someone, then executing him, then beating his corpse, then trying him again. It's beating a dead horse."Whaaaaa poor baby! NOT! He should be in jail for a life time.


The only reason jurors were called to the courtroom and had to look at the vile photos, he said, was because prosecutors were mad about Barron's legal tactics last month and wanted revenge.
Several jurors cried Wednesday as prosecutors showed a sampling of the images and videos found on Lancaster's computer.

Assessing the minimum sentence of two years on each charge would send a message to the District Attorney's Office that the jury's time had been wasted, he argued, adding that it also would indicate to Judge Davis that they preferred the prison terms not to be designated as consecutive. "I've never been more disgusted with the prosecution," Barron said of the case, adding later that his client will die in prison regardless of whether or not Phelps got his headlines.

"This is not a feud between Mr. Phelps and myself," he said. "It's the truth."
Minutes later, however, Phelps reminded jurors that Barron only briefly mentioned his client during closing arguments. He compared the attorney to magician Harry Houdini -- "a master of the art of misdirection."

"He doesn't want you to think about that stuff," Phelps said, pointing out that each of the 20,000 images found on Lancaster's computer constitutes a felony crime. "He wants you to believe it's a personality conflict.

"I know Mr. Barron doesn't like me and he doesn't like the District Attorney's Office, but this isn't the correct forum. ... We are here because of the conscious decisions to create serious crimes by a very smart man."

The District Attorney's Office isn't going to walk away from 102 counts because it is necessary that Lancaster's criminal history reflect the seriousness of his crimes, he said. And backing down from such last-minute defense tactics would make it impossible to try other crimes effectively, he said. Phelps conceded that he was seeking headlines in The Eagle and, hopefully, with the jury's help, in papers across the state and nation.

"That's what deterrence is all about," he said. "A message will be sent by your verdict. I want it to be, 'Brazos County juries give no quarter to child molesters.'"

Someone like Lancaster won't be deterred, he conceded. But a headline proclaiming a 1,040-year sentence, he said, will cause delete buttons all over Texas to be pushed -- perhaps by curious teenagers looking up such images for the first time.

"We can't squander an opportunity like that," he said repeatedly. "Your verdict is too important."