A former Little Rock police officer was found guilty Thursday of possession and receipt of child pornography after a jury deliberated for nearly eight hours over two days following a day and a half of testimony in federal court.
Eddie Scott Seaton, 55, a 13-year veteran of the Little Rock Police Department, sat motionless, hands clenched and a shocked expression on his face, as the foreman of the jury read out the two guilty findings. .
Seaton was indicted on the two counts in March 2020, approximately two months after investigators raided his Cabot home based on a tip from a North Dakota child sex crimes investigator who, on December 11, 2019, , downloaded a nine and a half year old file. minute-long video containing child pornography via the Bit Torrent network from a computer IP address that was later traced to Seaton's home.
The next day, according to court records, the investigator downloaded a second video and an image containing child pornography from the same IP address. After determining that the computer was located in the Little Rock metropolitan area, Little Rock police were notified. After matching the IP address to Seaton's residence, investigators executed a search warrant at his home on December 30, 2019.
Seaton, who has been free on remand since he was charged, will be sentenced later this year after the US Probation Office in Little Rock completes a pre-sentence report.
At the conclusion of the trial, Chief US District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. ordered that Seaton be held by federal marshals pending sentencing.
