Former Brevard principal to plead guilty to child porn charge
A former principal of Spessard Holland Elementary School and longtime Brevard Public Schools employee is set to plead guilty to receipt of child pornography in a federal court next week.
Ricky Delano Sheppard, 59, is set to register the plea at an 11 a.m. hearing on Tuesday in Orlando. He faces a mandatory minimum prison term of between 5 and 20 years, a maximum fine of $250,000 and a supervised release term of between 5 years to life, according to a plea agreement from a U.S. District Court.
He will also have to pay a restitution to any victims or to the community and will have to turn over computers.
With the plea, however, the prosecution will recommend that Sheppard be sentenced on the low end of the range of penalties as determined by court sentencing guidelines.
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Sheppard will admit, per the agreement, that he “knowingly received items of child pornography,” that “the items of child pornography had been transported or shipped in affecting interstate or foreign commerce, including by computer" and that “when the defendant received the items, the defendant believed the items contained child pornography.”
He will not face any other charges.
He was taken into custody on June 3 after a federal child pornography investigation. Sheppard, who served as principal at Spessard Holland Elementary for the 2015-2016 school year, was relieved of his duties on that date and is no longer an employee with Brevard Public Schools.
His experience included teaching stints from 1981 to 1984 at Port Malabar Elementary and Creel Elementary from 1985 to 1989. He served as assistant principal at Creel from 1989 to 1995 before returning to teaching.
While teaching at Gemini Elementary from 1995 to 2003, he was reprimanded over “inappropriate professional behavior and poor judgment concerning excessive gifts and personal comments targeted at an individual student in your first-grade classroom."
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He was not allowed to have contact with the boy, no gifts were to be given out and he was to make no more comments referring to “taking students home with you,” according to the letter of reprimand.
Following his tenure at Gemini, he taught at Freedom 7 Elementary from 2007-2009, before once again serving in administration as an assistant principal at from 2009-2015 at Stevenson Elementary.
“We’re glad to see the justice process has been completed and it will ensure that individuals like this will never be near our students again,” said Brevard Public Schools spokeswoman Michelle Irwin.
Contact Bonanno at 321-242-3662, cbonanno@floridatoday.com or follow Chris on Twitter @FTChrisBonanno.
