BATON ROUGE — A federal judge Thursday sentenced a Baton Rouge man to nearly 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to possession of child porn.

Michael Becnel, 56, was sentenced to 116 months in prison following his conviction for possessing obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children. Following his stint in prison, Becnel will serve five years of supervised release, a judge said.

According to admissions made as part of his guilty plea, Becnel knowingly possessed more than three obscene visual depictions of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct in June 2023. He had previously downloaded the child porn to his cellphone from a website. Law enforcement found the cellphone with child porn was found in Becnel's home when it was raided. 

At the time of the investigation, Becnel was already on federal supervised release following a previous federal conviction for failing to register as a sex offender. In April 2024, a judge revoked his term of supervision and sentenced him to serve 14 months consecutively to the term of imprisonment ordered Thursday.