A registered sex offender caught distributing child pornography in Mississippi will spend five decades behind bars.
Madison and Rankin Counties’ District Attorney Bubba Bramlett announced that Willard Geven Knight, 33, was sentenced to serve a total of 50 years for multiple counts of child exploitation, which must be served without the possibility of parole.
In January 2023, deputies from the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department began working an undercover operation to identify an individual using social networks to receive, traffic, share, and distribute images and videos depicting child pornography. The investigation revealed that Knight had recently moved from his home located in Rankin County to Wesson.
The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office, the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC), and Homeland Security assisted in the apprehension of Knight at his home in Wesson. During the search of his residence, multiple electronic devices were seized during the arrest and were processed by police. Those devices were found to contain numerous illicit photos and videos of children.
At the time of his arrest, Knight was already a registered sex offender who was on supervised probation through MDOC for a 2015 conviction for child exploitation. In the 2015 case, Knight was sentenced to 40 years to serve, with 35 of those years suspended. He spent five years in prison and was released onto supervised probation.
Upon his arrest for the most charges, Judge Dewey Arthur revoked the suspended sentence and ordered that he serve the 35-year term in prison.
In April, Knight pled guilty to the new charges of child exploitation. Upon completion of the 35-year sentence, he will serve an additional 15 years for this conviction without the chance of early release.
