MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A former West Tennessee sheriff’s deputy has been sentenced to more than 18 years in federal prison for obtaining and viewing child sexual abuse images over the internet.
Matthew Berry, 42, was sentenced Friday in federal court in Jackson. He is a former Crockett County sheriff’s deputy, and he had also worked previously as an officer in Halls, Ripley, Maury City and Brownsville.
Berry pleaded guilty in September to charges that he obtained sexual abuse images of children. Prosecutors said Berry was identified in 2019 after an undercover operative with the police department in Michigan City, Indiana, found a computer that was making the images available over the internet.
Agents went to Berry’s home in Bells, and he told investigators that he had been watching child sexual abuse material for “a long time,” prosecutors said. Examination of Berry’s digital devices showed he had been seeking out the material since at least 2002.
