Hagerstown man sentenced in sexual solicitation of minor, child porn case

A Hagerstown man received a seven-year active sentence after pleading guilty to sexual solicitation of a minor and soliciting a minor to take a pornographic photo, according to court records.

Edward Lee Wise Jr., 23, was scheduled for a trial in January on those charges and related ones. Wise pleaded guilty to the two felonies on Dec. 7, according to court records.

Washington County Circuit Court Judge Joseph S. Michael sentenced Wise to 10 years, suspending all but seven years, on the sexual solicitation of a minor conviction, according to court documents. Michael gave Wise a suspended 10-year sentence for soliciting a girl to take a pornographic photo.

Each of those felonies had a maximum possible penalty of 10 years in state prison and a $25,000 fine.

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Wise received credit for 933 days time served, which is over 2 1/2 years.

That includes time at the Washington County Detention Center as well as at a mental health facility because there was a period when Wise was deemed incompetent to stand trial, Assistant Public Defender Robert Sheehan said Tuesday. Incompetent to stand trial means the defendant is unable to assist in his defense.

When released, Wise will be on supervised probation for five years. Probation conditions include not having any contact with the victim and no unsupervised contact with minors, court records state.

His probation conditions also include not having any social media accounts or access to such accounts. Wise will not be allowed to have an internet device unless permitted by his probation agent and it has keystroke monitoring.

As a Tier II sex offender, Wise will have to register with the sex offender registry for 25 years, according to court records.

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What led to the charges against Wise?

The charges stemmed from an investigation involving the Maryland Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

In March 2021, the task force was notified by authorities in the girl's state, Minnesota, about a child being solicited to provide pornographic photos of herself to Instagram user accounts assigned to a person in Hagerstown, according to charging documents. The information was forwarded to a detective with the Washington County Sheriff's Office.

The exchange of messages and photos took place in late November and early December 2020, the document said. The girl's father accessed her Instagram account, downloaded the information and sent it to authorities.

The materials included sexually explicit messages between Wise and the girl and exchanges of sexual photos, including photos of the girl that met Maryland's criteria for child pornography.

In an early message, the girl lied about being 12, but then sent a message admitting her actual age, the document said.

Wise would have been 20 years old at the time of the alleged crimes.

Wise initially told police his Instagram account had been "hacked" and that he also let a relative of a friend use his cellphone, the document said. He later told investigators he met the girl through an app called Movie Star Planet 2 and their communications later moved from there to Instagram, the document said.

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Wise has dealt with mental health issues, traumatic brain injury

Wise's trial had been been delayed at least in part because he was found to be incompetent to stand trial. He was committed to the Maryland Department of Health until the court was satisfied he was "no longer incompetent to stand trial or is no longer, by reason of mental disorder or mental retardation, a danger to self or the person or property of another," according to another judge's order in August 2022.

According to a February 2022 letter from a psychological consulting firm, clinicians at the Washington County Detention Center had diagnosed Wise with major depressive disorder, traumatic brain injury and borderline personality disorder, as well as with malingering.

The forensic psychologist who wrote the letter said one concern is that Wise is "both impaired and malingering."

Assistant Public Defender Robert Sheehan said Tuesday that during the period when Wise was incompetent to stand trial Wise seemed to have difficulty understanding the issues involved in his case and what was happening. Wise also was engaging in self-harm at the time, banging his head against a wall.

Wise received competency restoration services, restoring him to competency so he could assist with his case, Sheehan said.

Wise was found competent to stand trial last August, according to his case docket.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Hagerstown man pleads in sexual solicitation of minor cas