Disgraced former gubernatorial candidate Eliot Cutler has been released from jail.
Cutler, 77, was released Thursday from the Hancock County Jail in Ellsworth, a jail administrator told NBC affiliate News Center Maine.
Cutler pleaded guilty to four felony counts of possessing child pornography in Hancock County court on May 4. The plea and sentencing was part of a deal reached by prosecutors with Cutler, announced in April of last year.
He began serving nine months of a four-year sentence on June 1.
Cutler did his time in county jail because only sentences longer than nine months are served at state prisons. Once released, if Cutler violates his probation, he could be sent to prison for the remainder of the sentence.
Cutler also will have to register as a sex offender for 10 years, make a $5,000 donation to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and serve six years of probation.
He wasn’t immediately listed on the sex offender registry early Thursday afternoon.
The former Maine gubernatorial candidate had 142,000 pornographic images and videos of children saved on his electronic devices when police searched his Brooklin home in March 2022, according to a sentencing memo filed by Hancock County District Attorney Robert Granger. Nearly 84,000 of those images depicted children under age 12, with some of the children as young as 4 to 6 years old, according to the memo.
