Former Professor Likely to Plead Not Guilty to Child Porn Allegations

By Lawrence Mower

By LAWRENCE MOWER

REVIEW-JOURNAL

The former 32-year flute professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, accused of possessing more than 26,000 images of child pornography waived his right to a preliminary hearing Monday.

Instead, Richard Soule, 62, will be expected to enter a not guilty plea on Dec. 28.

“We want to get this in front of a jury as soon as possible,” defense attorney Conrad Claus said.

Claus also accused Conrad Hafen, chief deputy attorney general over the Criminal Division and Political Corruption Unit, of using the case to put his image in front of the media in the weeks leading up to the election.

Hafen, who lost a race for a district court judge seat in November, called the accusation “laughable.”

“I was contacted by the media from the very beginning,” Hafen said. “That’s a completely false accusation.”

Claus wouldn’t discuss Soule’s defense, and Soule, who attended the hearing with his wife, wouldn’t comment on the case.

Soule, who was also a principal flutist for the Las Vegas Philharmonic, retired from UNLV Oct. 13 after the attorney general’s office opened an investigation into the case.

A UNLV computer technician located child pornography on a UNLV computer server. The employee traced it back to Soule’s computer and observed Soule in the act of downloading pictures, according to Hafen.

An investigation turned up images on several portable hard drives, ZIP disks and thumb drives in his home and office computers.

Soule faces 25 counts of possession of child pornography, and Hafen said he could still face charges of misconduct of a public office for storing the images on his office computer.

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