A federal appeals court has upheld the conviction of Ray Valas, the former New Hampshire National Guard commander found guilty in 2014 of soliciting sex from an underage girl.
In a decision issued Friday, a panel of three judges disputed all of Valas’s claims, including that jurors had been given faulty instructions before beginning deliberations. The jury was told they could convict him if he knew the girl was under 18, if he recklessly disregarded her young age, or if he had a reasonable opportunity to view her and she was under 18.
The panel dismissed Valas’s assertion that they failed to disclose exculpatory photos of the girl that were later shared with jurors and that showed her displaying herself suggestively. In his appeal, Valas says prosecutors “waited until it had presented a cleaned-up version of (the girl) and had played her up for the jury before it disclosed photographs that showed (her) dressed and posed provocatively, looking anything but child-like.”
Valas was convicted of one count of sex trafficking of a minor and sentenced last year to 15 years in prison. Prosecutors said he twice paid for sex acts with a 15-year-old girl during a work trip to Texas in 2013. Valas acknowledged meeting the girl, but said it was only to interview her for research he was conducting at Syracuse University.
(Jeremy Blackman can be reached at 369-3319, jblackman@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @JBlackmanCM.)