On a projector screen before a packed federal courtroom in Gainesville at Craig Francis Hall's sentencing hearing Tuesday defense attorneys put up a timeline showing his decline. He went from a longtime Gainesville attorney and one-time circuit judge candidate to a man suffering from mental illness in the wake of prostate cancer and its complications who downloaded child pornography. Hall's attorneys argued that by 2007, when authorities confiscated four videos showing child pornography from Hall's office, his depression was so severe, he had sought child pornography not for his enjoyment but as a way to confirm his suspicion that God didn't exist and that the world was full of evil. The sentencing followed more than three hours of testimony from Hall's psychologists and psychiatrists Dozens of Hall's friends and supporters packed the courtroom Hall's wife, Marilyn, tearfully asked the judge to consider a prison sentence's impact on Hall's twins |
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