Former Stoughton Realtor and City Council member Paul Lawrence was sentenced on Feb. 17 to three years in state prison, and an additional two years of extended supervision following a guilty plea on a felony count of possessing child pornography.
According to court records, Lawrence was facing five felony counts of possessing child pornography, four of which were dismissed as part of a plea arrangement with Dane County Circuit Court Judge David T. Flanagan. Lawrence, 68, spent nearly 20 years on the Council before losing his seat to Lisa Reeves in 2017, and served on the city’s Redevelopment Authority and the Capital Area Regional Planning Commission.
He was arrested on Aug. 27, 2021 after Stoughton police conducted an early morning warrant search on his home and found a closed laptop playing a video of two teenage boys having sex, according to a complaint filed in Dane County Circuit Court.
Police carried out a warrant after the state Department of Justice’s Division of Criminal Investigation received four CyberTipline reports from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children on June 16, 2021, and U.S. Cellular and Charter complied with a subpoena for Lawrence’s internet records in June and July. Google’s content scanning software alerted NCMEC to the pornographic images after Lawrence allegedly uploaded them to his account in April as a means of saving them to view at a later time, according to the criminal complaint.
According to court records, Lawrence had moved from Stoughton to Menasha since the arrest.
