A 31-year-old former Mesa police officer was sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms in prison for child molestation and child pornography-related offenses in Pinal County Superior Court on Monday.
Justin Bowman, 31, of Maricopa, who resigned from the Mesa Police Department in Sept. 2008 in the midst of an internal affairs investigation into his unsatisfactory performance issues, was convicted of 32 counts of child molestation, sexual conduct with a minor, sexual exploitation of a minor and furnishing obscene materials to a minor, according to court records.
Bowman, who was arrested in 2008, committed the crimes against a 9-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy between March 1, 2008 and Oct. 29, 2008. Bowman's wife had called authorities to inform them that he was suicidal, and early on in the investigation, police discovered that he had child pornography on his computer hard drive and that he allegedly had been molesting the two children, according to court records.
Bowman will be locked up for a long time and it would be a formidable challenge at best for him to get released, according to Kostas Kalaitzidis, spokesman for the Pinal County Attorney's Office.
"It sounds excessive, but we have two issues at play here," Kalaitzidis said. "First, we want this guy to go to prison, and second, you don't want him to get out. He's not a good guy, he's just not a good guy. He molested two pre-pubescent children and had child pornography on his computer. If he gets paroled on one life sentence, he's got to beat 14 other life sentences."
The investigation was conducted by the Arizona Department of Public Safety, the Pinal County Sheriff's Office, Child Help and the Pinal County Family Advocacy Center, which attempts to minimize the psychological trauma to victims.
At the time of Bowman's conviction earlier this month, Pinal County Attorney James Walsh said in a statement, "These were horrible crimes against very young children. This case really stands out as a showcase of the multi-disciplinary approach we have been working on for years. I am proud of the work done by the Family Advocacy Center."
Masterrogue666 posted at 7:57 am on Tue, Jul 20, 2010.
Animals like this need to be executed, not housed and cared for until they die. MPD got a black eye over this one, and makes them look bad.