Pollard is sentenced to prison
HARTINGTON — A Randolph man was sentenced in Cedar County District Court Monday to 45-53 years in prison for committing sexual assault against children.
Cedar County District Court Judge Paul Vaughn sentenced Clinton Pollard, 34, Randolph, on five felony counts involving children as young as eight years old.
After a plea agreement reducing the charges, Pollard pleaded no contest in September to three counts of attempted first-degree sexual assault of a child, two counts of third-degree sexual assault of a child and to manufacturing of a visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct of a child.
The attempted sexual assault charges carry a maximum sentence of 50 years in prison each.
Assistant Nebraska Attorney General Sandra Allen said Pollard faces two more charges in Pierce County. Those allegations concern two other minors.
Pollard’s attorney, Mathew McDonald, Public Advocacy Commission, Lincoln, said his client knows he did the wrong thing and knows he needs to be punished for his actions, but urged the Judge not to be too harsh with his sentence.
McDonald asked the Judge for a sentence that would put his client behind bars into his 60s with good time.
“That’s what we are asking for — give him a chance to live out the rest of his life as an old man. So he has a little bit of his life to live when he gets out of prison,”
Allen asked the judge for a harsh penalty. In her statement to the court, Allen said Pollard was, “no stranger to the court.”
In 2010, he was sentenced to one year in prison as a result of a Pierce County sexual assault case.
Pre-sentencing hearing documents said Pollard knew it was wrong to have sex with underage children, and he has been fighting that urge. The report also quoted Pollard as saying his use of drugs made him use poor judgement.
“The one thing that is clear is this defendant doesn’t care who he goes after. He doesn’t care about the age, the gender, whether it’s a relative or not,” Allen said. “Society needs to be protected from this man.”
Allen said Pollard minimizes this case by trying to say the drugs made him do it.
“The defendant in his own statement states that he is a manipulator, and that’s what he is trying to do in this case — manipulate the court into believing something that is just not true,” she said.
In making his ruling, Judge Vaughn said this was a very difficult case.
“This presents a very troubling picture for this court. In Pierce County and in Cedar County over the last 10 years you knew all of your victims. They trusted you. You violated that trust in a horrible way,” the Judge said. “You have impacted their lives in a terrible way, you have left a weight of disparity and heartache that is not going to be easy to repair.”
