A 45-year-old Hutchinson man arrested back in August of last year for allegedly downloading child porn was in court Friday morning where he entered a plea in the case.
Wayne Hegner had been charged with two counts of sexual exploitation of a child, but entered a plea to just one of the counts while the state dropped the other. By entering the plea, he avoided a trial that was scheduled for earlier this week.
The case started with police investigating Hegner allegedly downloading the pictures using a website, “Peer-to-Peer” file sharing. It’s a website where people exchange and send each other this kind of material. This allegedly going on for over a year.
Police Detective Scott Carlton told us at the time of the arrest that he had been investigating the case for a couple of months prior to Hegner being taken into custody and a look at his computer showed a few hundred files of child porn.
Sentencing in the case will be next month in front of Judge Trish Rose.