Local brothers jailed on child pornography charges

The size of their child pornography collections turned out to be the difference for two brothers, one of whom is heading to a federal prison for a two-year sentence while the other heads to jail for half the time.

Anthony Kurtis Boyle, 23, had 7,848 illegal files on his computer. His brother, Nicholas James Boyle, 21, had 5,004.

There wasn’t much else to distinguish between them at their sentencing hearings, held at the same time in front of the same judge in Saskatoon provincial court in March. Both had entered guilty pleas to possessing child porn.

Both of their collections contained egregious, horrific images and videos of young children being sexually abused. Both young men had no prior criminal record and co-operated with police upon their arrest.

The Crown had argued for a sentence of 24 to 30 months for Anthony and 18 months to two years less a day for Nicholas, plus three years of probation. Defence lawyers Brian Pfefferle and Kevin Hill argued for 12 months for Anthony and six to nine months for Nicholas, plus probation.

On Thursday, Judge Dolores Ebert delivered her decision: two years for Anthony and one year for Nicholas, plus two years of probation for Nicholas.

“We were somewhat taken aback by the decision,” Anthony’s lawyer, Pfefferle, said in an interview. “We were most surprised at the difference in the sentences between the two brothers.”

Pfefferle said he hadn’t received instructions to appeal the sentence, as his client’s “primary purpose” right now is moving on with his life. However, he said that if he were to consider an appeal, the principle of “parity” — sentences of similar lengths for similar offences committed by similar offenders — would obviously be a consideration.

Both brothers must submit samples of their DNA and comply with the national sex offender registry for 10 years.