LAKE HAVASU CITY – A Lake Havasu City man offered a new wrinkle to his request to withdraw from his guilty plea in a child pornography case before he was sentenced to prison Tuesday, May 21.
Casey Cassidy, 30, pleaded guilty to two of the charges while six other sexual exploitation of a minor counts were dismissed during an April 4 hearing. Though he told the judge he was thinking clearly at the time, Cassidy changed his tune when he showed up for his May 10 sentencing hearing before Judge Camacho.
The court was informed that Cassidy wanted to withdraw from the plea deal because he was off his medications when he entered his agreement and that he would not have pleaded guilty had he been on his medications at the time.
Cassidy upped the ante on his medication claim during the May 21 hearing and said he was high on methamphetamine when he pleaded guilty.
“I use it all the time to self-medicate,” Cassidy said. “It alleviates reality for me. It allows me to escape my life.”
Public Defender Paul Amann said his client was “not in his right mind” when he pleaded guilty and that he wants to start over and go to trial.
Deputy county attorney Leah Nelson argued that Cassidy suffered “buyer’s remorse” over the plea deal and was working to manufacture excuses and reasons for getting the bargain nullified. She argued that neither Cassidy nor Amann met the steep burden to prove that a manifest injustice would occur if the deal was not rejected.
Judge Camacho agreed.
The Judge sent Cassidy to prison for 7.5 years. He’ll register as a sex offender and serve probation for life once released from prison.
Police reports indicate that Cassidy’s Dropbox Account stored 81 files of illegal images of underage minors engaged in sexually exploitive exhibition or activity discovered during an investigation begun last June.
Dave Hawkins
