SOUTH DAKOTA
Capital Journal
This week in federal court in Pierre, Joseph Raleigh admitted that as a Baptist pastor last Oct. 16 he drove to Blunt with $300 cash in his pocket to pay a 15-year-old girl for a half-hour of sex in his pickup truck.
The guilty plea brings with it new details of what he did and planned to do, in his own words.
Before U.S. District Judge Roberto Lange, Raleigh, 34, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to attempted trafficking of a minor girl for commercial sex. The maximum sentence for the charge is 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised probation after any prison sentence.
As the Capital Journal earlier reported, Raleigh struck a plea deal with federal prosecutors this spring, who dropped more serious charges that carried a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence.
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