A Santa Cruz man was released on house arrest, after waiving a preliminary hearing in exchange for prosecutors dropping a bid to have him held without bail pending trial, in a case where he is charged with possession of child pornography.
According to the withdrawal of the motion for pre-trial detention, James Earl Towles, 72, agreed to be on house arrest, have no contact with minors, no access to the Internet, smart phones or any device with Internet access and be in the custody of his wife, who must ensure he can’t access the Internet.
While prosecutors submitted the motion to withdraw the pre-trial detention application on Dec. 5, and outlined why, Towles’s waiver of a preliminary hearing has not been filed in the court record.
An order setting Towles’s conditions of release on Dec. 9, signed by District Judge Jason Lidyard, states he has been released on his personal recognizance to the custody of is wife. He is not allowed to “return to the location of the alleged incident,” not allowed leave the state or Rio Arriba or Santa Fe counties without prior court permission, and will be supervised on “level 4 supervision,” which appears to mean house arrest.
In the motion for pre-trial detention, prosecutors wrote that Towles “poses a danger to victims of child sex trafficking.”
However, Towles was accused of downloading child pornography and was not accused of molestation.
While Santa Fe police detectives raided his house and interrogated him on Nov. 13, an arrest warrant was not issued until Nov. 21. He was arrested on Dec. 2. Three days later, Dec. 5, prosecutors moved to have him released on house arrest after he agreed to waive a preliminary hearing.
He was bound over on a single charge of “sexual exploitation of children (possession) (child under 13).”
Evidence
Santa Fe Police Detective Alex Durham wrote in an affidavit for an arrest warrant that he received 16 tips from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, for activity between 2023 and 2025, with a common suspect.
When Durham raided Towles’s house, he collected his phone, laptop, an external hard drive and another computer. On his phone, after getting his password, he found downloaded child pornography, he wrote.
During the raid, Towles told Durham he started downloading child pornography two years ago and “he knew it was wrong but could not help it,” he wrote.
He told the detective he downloads the images “a couple days a week,” he wrote.
Durham sought an arrest warrant because Towles is a grandfather who has “access to juveniles similar in age to children in the CSAM videos” and that people who possess child pornography are statistically likely to be “hands on offenders” and therefore, he needed to be arrested to protect the community and any “real-life victims.”
Possession of child pornography is a fourth degree felony but carries a special penalty of up to 10 years in prison. If the child pornography represents children under 13, there is a mandatory minimum sentence of one year and the maximum sentence is 11 years, according to state law. Normally, a fourth degree felony carries a maximum sentence of 18 months.