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BALTIMORE — A man who was caught having sex with a 15-year-old girl in his bedroom when investigators conducted a drug raid at his Elkton-area residence in January 2018 received a 20-year sentence on Thursday — and he will serve that term after completing a 12-year penalty that was imposed on him in the related narcotics case, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Cecil County District Court records.
U.S. District Judge George L. Russell III imposed the 20-year sentence on the defendant — Luis Christian Rivera, 34 — in federal court in Baltimore after Rivera pleaded guilty to production of child pornography, prosecutors said. The judge made that federal prison penalty consecutive to a 12-year sentence that Rivera received at the state level in the drug case, prosecutors added.
In addition, the judge ordered Rivera to serve 20 years of supervised probation after completing his sentences, which total 32 years. The judge also ordered Rivera to continue registering as a convicted sex offender.
Maryland State Police investigators arrested and charged Rivera after Cecil County Drug Task Force agents found him and the teenage girl in his bed while they were raiding his residence in the 800 block of East Old Philadelphia Road at about 5:40 a.m. Jan. 30, 2018, according to state court records and Cecil Whig archives.
“Officers observed (the girl) lying in the sole bed in that bedroom; she quickly jumped up and pulled her shirt down over her bare chest when law enforcement officers entered the room. Rivera quickly jumped out of that bed, nude, onto an adjacent futon and quickly covered himself up with a blanket. Officers observed that there was adult pornography playing on the television in the bedroom,” court records show.
Rivera later made a confession, which was corroborated by the girl, according to court records.
“During subsequent independent interviews with Rivera and (the girl), both have stated that they are involved in a sexual relationship and were, in fact, having sexual intercourse when law enforcement executed the search-and-seizure warrant,” court records show.
During the investigation, MSP detectives found “19 videos and two photographs depicting Rivera and (the girl) in various sexual acts,” after confiscating three of Rivera’s cell phones, police reported.
According to plea agreement information in the federal case, Rivera, at the outset of the investigation, denied having a sexual relationship with the girl — identified only as “Jane Doe” in court records — and he also maintained that the heroin, crack cocaine and powder cocaine that investigators confiscated from his bedroom belonged to Jane Doe.
While at the hospital for a sexual assault forensic examination, Jane Doe told a social worker that she and Rivera were in a sexual relationship and evidence proving that would be present on their cell phones, which investigators seized during the court-approved search of Rivera’s house, prosecutors reported.
Investigators checked information contained on the confiscated digital items, including two cell phones, after obtaining a search warrant, prosecutors said. A forensic examination of the cell phones’ SD cards revealed “18 videos of Rivera and Jane Doe engaged in sexually explicit conduct, which were all taken by Rivera or by Jane Doe at Rivera’s direction,” prosecutors added.
Rivera purportedly pressured Jane Doe after his arrest, according to a USAO spokesperson.
“After his arrest and detention, Rivera admitted that he made over 700 calls to Jane Doe saying things like: She was the reason he was locked up; everyone knew that Rivera was arrested because Jane Doe lied and that everything was her fault. Rivera also instructed Jane Doe to: Recant her statement to the social worker; deny that it was her in the videos; and to lie at his trial on drug charges in Cecil County,” the spokesperson outlined.
Moreover, in January 2019, law enforcement officers recovered and reviewed several letters that Rivera had written to Jane Doe from the detention center, prosecutors said. In one of those letters, Rivera instructed Jane Doe to get her family to say that it was not Jane Doe in the videos, prosecutors added. In one section of that letter,. Rivera wrote, “You have to beg them to understand that it’s not fair that an innocent man is in jail because of your lies...,” prosecutors reported.
After arresting Rivera in January 2018, investigators filed 25 charges against him relating to the confiscated child pornography and his interaction with Jane Doe, including fourth-degree sex act with a child who is 14 or 15 years old, fourth-degree sex offense with a child who is 14 or 15 years old, third-degree sex offense and second-degree assault, court records show.
Investigators also filed several drug charges against Rivera relating to the illegal narcotics that they seized in his bedroom.
In March 2019, Cecil County Circuit Court Administrative Judge Keith A. Baynes imposed a 12-year sentence on Rivera after finding him guilty of manufacturing crack cocaine at the conclusion of a one-day bench trial two months earlier, according to court records and Cecil Whig archives.
Baynes also imposed three one-year sentences, all of which he then suspended, for related convictions of possession of heroin, possession of drug paraphernalia and illegal possession of Suboxone, court records show.
Rivera is serving that 12-year sentence in a Maryland Department of Corrections prison. After completing that term of incarceration, Rivera likely will be transferred to a federal prison to serve his 20-year sentence in the child pornography case.
Originally published on cecildaily.com, part of the TownNews Content Exchange.
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