Steven Powell convicted of child porn possession, faces up to 5 years in prison



TACOMA -- A jury on Monday convicted Steven Powell of possession of child pornography.

The 65-year-old faces up to five years in prison when he is sentenced on Aug. 21.

The Pierce County Superior Court jury took just a couple of hours to deliberate before finding Powell guilty of the single count.

Powell, was on trial for possessing explicit images of two neighbor girls, ages 8 and 10, that prosecutors say were taken from a bedroom window of his home in 2006 and 2007. His trial began last week and jurors returned a unanimous verdict Monday afternoon.

In 2012 Powell was convicted on 14 counts of voyeurism for shooting video and still pictures of the girls as they used a family bathroom next door. The child porn charges were thrown out by a superior court judge before the voyeurism trial but were reinstated by an appeals court.

Powell is the father of Josh Powell, who killed his two young boys and himself in Graham while he was being investigated for possibly killing his wife, Susan Cox Powell, in Utah.

The current case goes back to 2011 when police first searched Steven Powell’s home in Graham. They were looking for evidence in the Susan Cox Powell investigation. She had vanished, and detectives believed her husband Josh, who was living with his dad at the time, was involved in her disappearance.

Instead, they found several pictures and videos of two young neighbor girls in their bathroom.

Prosecutors say there were hundreds of photos showing the girls naked in the bath, but the family next door apparently never knew they were being victimized.