KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — A disgraced former East Tennessee defense attorney must serve a life sentence in federal prison plus another 10 years for sex crimes involving a 15-year-old girl and another person he thought was underage but was actually an undercover officer.
Kent L. Booher, 67, told U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Varlan on Wednesday he felt betrayed in the case.
"People I tried to help have turned on me and lied to me," Booher said at his sentencing hearing. "The government accused me of things that never happened."
Varlan was unmoved.
The judge imposed a life sentence for Booher to be followed by another 120-month term. He'll surely die in federal prison.
Varlan also said Booher should pay restitution to his victim, but he wanted to give the defense and prosecution time to offer their views on what that should be. The government suggested it should be more than $500,000 to help the victim get long-term treatment.
A federal jury in 2021 found Booher guilty of five counts including child enticement, committing a sex crime with a minor while a registered sex offender and attempted production of child pornography.
The counts covered two periods in the former lawyer's life.
From the early 2000s until about 2015, he practiced law largely in Loudon and Roane counties. According to federal prosecutor Jennifer Kolman, he preyed on young female clients willing to trade sex for representation.
Through his work in 2012, he met one 14-year-old girl who was an opioid addict and her drug-addicted mother. At the time he was having sex with another drug-addicted client, who introduced him to the girl.
At first, Booher had sexual threesomes with the girl and his client. Those turned, however, to just sex between him and the young victim, according to Kolman.
According to the government, they had regular sex over a period of months from 2012-13.
Booher gave her gifts and money that she used to buy drugs. He also gave her a cell phone and an iPad for payment for sex, according to Kolman.
"He gives her a frickin' promise ring!" Kolman exclaimed to Varlan on Wednesday while detailing how the married man, then in his late 50s, manipulated the girl.
Defense attorney Russell T. Greene told the judge the government had offered no proof that Booher had plied the girl with drugs.
No family member could help the girl, so she turned to a drug-addicted neighbor in her apartment complex. That woman alerted authorities, which led to Booher being prosecuted in state court in Loudon County. He pleaded guilty in 2014 to the state crime of statutory rape, for which he served no time in prison, according to Kolman.
Booher lost his state law license and had to register as a sex offender. It did not quench his desire to have sex with underage women, the government alleged.
In 2019, he struck up online communication with someone who he thought was a young female. In fact, it was an undercover officer.
Posing as someone named "Lori Thompson," the officer told Booher she was 16. That didn't deter the convict, according to Kolman.
At one point he observed that he knew better than to be talking to her but he was doing it anyway, the prosecutor said.
When Booher set up a meeting with "Lori Thompson" at a restaurant, authorities moved in and arrested him. He was indicted federally first for the crimes involving the undercover officer, and then the government added counts dating to his crimes with the 15-year-old.
Varlan said Booher's crimes merited life plus 10 years. He said the man showed no remorse for what he'd done.
In fact, the judge noted, he made a slip of the tongue at one point in telling the judge that while he was sorry she'd suffered trauma, "Your honor, it wasn't all me."
The victim, now 24, attended Wednesday's sentencing hearing. She's been drug-free for several years and is a mom now herself, according to court testimony.
Kolman read a statement from her to Varlan as part of the sentencing hearing.
The young woman said she remembered how pleasant her life had been before age 13, when another man sexually abused her. She's undergone therapy because of what men have done to her, she wrote.
She said she'd spent more hours than she could count wishing she wasn't the girl who'd been sexually abused.
"I've had nothing but shame and suffering," Kolman said, quoting the victim.