Local man gets rider after admitting to downloading child pornography

IDAHO FALLS — A 56-year-old man was sentenced on Monday after pleading guilty to possessing child porn.

District Judge Michael Whyte sentenced Dallas Ziebarth to a minimum of two years and a maximum of ten years in prison.

Whyte then retained jurisdiction, meaning Ziebarth will complete a rider treatment program in prison for one year. Once the program is done, Whyte can decide whether or not to send Ziebarth to jail for his given sentence or release him into probation.

Ziebarth will receive credit for time served, be required to register as a sex offender and pay $2,000 in fines and $1,091 in court costs.

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He initially pleaded not guilty to ten counts of felony willfully possessing or accessing child sexually exploitative material.

He later signed a plea agreement in October. He agreed to plead guilty to two counts of felony sexual exploitation of a child. The prosecution agreed to dismiss the remaining eight charges.

Sentencing

During sentencing, Ziebarth’s attorney, Curtis Smith, argued for a retained jurisdiction with an underlying sentence of a minimum of two years and a maximum of ten years in prison, stating that his client has little to no prior criminal history.

“I find myself oftentimes with a young individual here; in fact, maybe I’ve been before this court on those types of cases with younger individuals. I find myself in those cases many times arguing, ‘Hey, here we have a young person; their brain isn’t fully developed, and there’s a lot of reasons why they’re salvageable,'” said Smith. “I’m assuming that within that argument, somebody could also say, ‘Well, if someone is older, maybe they should know better.’ And maybe this is the unpardonable, unforgivable sin.”

Curtis argued that the crime should not be an “im-pardonable sin” and that Ziebarth deserved a level of forgiveness for being a productive member of society before he started looking at child pornography.

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“Is this a terrible crime? Absolutely. Is it a crime that we all wish we could rid from our community? Absolutely. My client would agree as well,” said Smith. “I don’t like the idea that this is the im-pardonable sin. I don’t like the idea that someone who has spent their life doing very productive things, then all of a sudden finds themselves in the chair of my client, can’t rely a little bit on some of the good life that’s been lived.”

Prosecuting attorney Pendrey Pauline Trammell argued Ziebarth should serve an immediate prison sentence of a minimum of two years and a maximum of ten years. Trammell described the child pornography images in graphic detail to the court, saying Ziebarth has no criminal history only because he wasn’t caught earlier.

Trammell explained and described the highly graphic images, including a five-year-old girl being sexually assaulted by an adult man on camera.

“The rest of the images, as charged, are all of five- to eight-year-old female children being raped anally, orally and vaginally. He has a focus on female children five to eight years old,” said Trammell. “The reality of this is the PSI and PSC look at his criminal history as nothing because he hasn’t been convicted. But we know full well that he’s been doing this for at least three, if not more, years; he simply hadn’t been caught.”

Trammell told the court that if Ziebarth was given a prison sentence, he would be getting an appropriate punishment, vulnerable community members would be protected, and potential offenders could be deterred from crimes like this in the future.

“The risk here, your honor, if he’s not sanctioned to some sort of imprisonment, what happens when those photos and videos aren’t enough?” said Trammell. “That next step is very clearly hands-on offenses, and we see that over and over and over again when these crimes aren’t taken seriously enough. There has to be a real punishment for these types of crimes, or they’re just going to keep happening over and over and over again.”

When Ziebarth was allowed to address the court, Smith told the court his client submitted a personal letter during the pre-sentence investigation and wished for that to replace his in-court statement.

Before ruling, Whyte addressed Ziebarth, explaining his decision and describing the seriousness of the crime.

“They are someone’s children. They have been abused, and that abuse has then been shared,” said Whyte. “I can’t think of, in looking at your PSI, a more aggravating factor than the crime itself.”

Whyte continued, describing the snowballing effect that these crimes often create.

“The severity of this crime snowballs in my mind. Someone has to create the event and the imagery. That individual or individuals are doing it for various reasons, but one of which I can guess is because they know they have a ready audience,” said Whyte. “And as long as someone is uploading or downloading those images, they will continue to produce it.”

Before placing Ziebarth on the rider, Whyte gave a final explanation of the seriousness of the crime and the opportunities Ziebarth had to stop it.

“It’s just a sad measure of society that we are even here. But there’s an audience for this; you are one of those members. You sought it out,” said Whyte. “You sought it out for years with opportunities to stop, to seek counseling, to seek advice, and I understand it would be very difficult; I’m not suggesting it wouldn’t be, but you didn’t seek that out.”

Background of the case

On May 4, detectives and members of the Attorney General’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force served a search warrant at Ziebarth’s home, which ended in officials stopping him on his way to work, where he was arrested.

During an interview, Ziebarth reportedly stated that he had been downloading and viewing child porn images for “many years.” He also said that he had not gone to work the day before and instead viewed child porn during the day.

Ziebarth told detectives that he used an old home computer to download and save the images and that his preferred child porn images were of children “ages eight to ten.”

While searching the home, police found a small black computer in an office that showed hundreds of images of child porn in the recycle bin.

There were also several images in a computer folder, including sexual photos of children as young as five years old.