LA PLATA, Md.—Tony Covington, State’s Attorney for Charles County, announced that on Tuesday, April 28, 2026, Charles County Circuit Court Judge Donine Carrington Martin sentenced Dennis Demoine Smith, 66, of Nanjemoy, to 118 years in prison for 28 counts of Use of a Computer to Depict Minors in a Sexual Act and 237 counts of Possession of Child Pornography.
On October 22, 2025, a Charles County jury, after a three-day trial, convicted Smith of the aforementioned charges.
Between January and April of 2023, the Charles County Sheriff’s Office received 14 cyber tips from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). The reports indicated that files containing child sexual abuse material had been uploaded to the Verizon Cloud linked to Smith’s phone number.
Following an investigation into the reported files, detectives obtained and executed a search and seizure warrant for Smith and his residence. During the search, several electronic devices were recovered. A forensic examination of those devices revealed numerous files containing child sexual abuse material depicting children under the age of 16.
On November 19, 2024, Smith was apprehended. However, during the course of the investigation, detectives discovered additional files containing child pornographic material, including 28 screen recordings that were created by Smith himself.
At an earlier sentencing hearing for Smith, Assistant State’s Attorney Edward Stickles requested a 120-year sentence, noting that most of the videos involved prepubescent children being sexually assaulted by adults. He told the judge, “These cases are not victimless crimes. The victimization of these children does not end. It continues each time someone downloads or uses these videos. These children suffer lifelong consequences because the videos are on the internet and will never go away.” He continued that the victims “have to live with the pain and trauma. Some of these kids may never recover.”
At Tuesday’s sentencing, the Honorable Judge Carrington told the defendant that these types of crimes “ensures that the victimization doesn’t end but happens again and again and again. Victims suffer ongoing harm knowing that strangers continue to view their bodies. The harm is not contained to a single moment of time.” She continued that distributors and viewers are “enablers of a system that perpetuate harm” and stated that the “online exploitation of children will be met with punishment.”