Disgraced former independent candidate for Maine governor Eliot Cutler will serve nine months behind bars as part of a plea deal for possessing child pornography.
Cutler, who previously pleaded not guilty, will change his plea on Thursday in Hancock County Superior Court, according to the Portland Press Herald. It’s not clear if he will change his plea to guilty or no contest to each of the four counts of possession of sexually explicit material of a child under 12.
Prosecutors announced last month they reached a plea deal with Cutler that included prison time, but details of the agreement had not been revealed until Tuesday.
Under the plea agreement, Cutler faces four years of incarceration with all but nine months suspended and six years of probation, the Press Herald reported.
Police searched Cutler’s homes in Brooklin and Portland on March 23, 2022, and in Brooklin found flash storage cards with “literally thousands of videos of very young children being sexually abused,” police later said.
Two days later he was arrested at his house in Brooklin. He spent a few hours at Hancock County Jail in Ellsworth before he was released that same day on $50,000 cash bail.
Prosecutors opted to negotiate a plea deal with Cutler because of an extensive backlog of criminal cases and his age created a real possibility he would never “see the inside of a courtroom during his lifetime,” Hancock County District Attorney Robert Granger told the Bangor Daily News last month.
Granger told the BDN that the evidence against Cutler — which includes a statement to his wife in front of police at his Brooklin home that they would find child pornography on one of his computers — put prosecutors in “a very strong position” with respect to getting a conviction.
“I believe Mr. Cutler considered that his only reasonable option was to enter a plea in this situation,” Granger said.