A Habersham County man will serve 25 years in prison for two counts of sexual exploitation of a child

A Habersham County man will spend the next 25 years in prison after being convicted of two counts of sexual exploitation of children.

According to Mountain Judicial Circuit District Attorney George Christian, 40-year-old Charles Keith Herring received his sentence following a 4-day trial in Habersham County Superior Court.

Mountain Judicial Circuit Chief Judge Russell Smith presided over the case.

During the trial, the State presented evidence that on January 15, 2017, Herring possessed two digital images of a minor child depicting sexually explicit conduct, along with other photographs of a similar nature that indicated the charged photographs were lewd.

The images were uploaded to Herring’s Google Drive on the aforementioned date.

As required by Federal law, Google reported the suspicious images to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Washington, D.C. and an alert was passed on to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit (CEACC).

Special Agent Trisha Cannon investigated the offenses for the CEACC.

During the trial, witnesses testified that the subject of the photographs was Herring’s 22-month-old daughter.

However, Herring was found not guilty of two counts of child molestation related to the acts depicted in the digital images.

Following the jury’s verdict, Judge Smith heard arguments and evidence from both the State and the Defense. He also heard a victim impact statement from the mother of the victim.

At the end of the court proceedings, Judge Smith sentenced Herring to 25 years in prison followed by 15 years of probation.