MACHIAS – A 25-year-old Calais man admitted to a judge Tuesday he was guilty of disseminating and possessing child pornography, but said he would explain why he had the more than 300 images in his two Internet accounts at his sentencing hearing next month.

Under a plea agreement reached with the District Attorney’s Office, Timothy Lawless entered guilty pleas in Washington County Superior Court to two counts of dissemination of sexually explicit material and two counts of possession of sexually explicit material.

Last year, Lawless was charged with 10 counts of possession of sexually explicit material and four counts of dissemination of sexually explicit material after police seized pornographic material from Internet accounts registered to him.

Some of the material contained images of minors under age 12 engaged in sexually explicit acts, while others were of minors under 18. The charge included sending e-mails with images of the sexually explicit materials attached to them.

Justice E. Allen Hunter set sentencing for Feb. 20.

Lawless remains free on the $10,000 unsecured bail set for him last year.

Lawless could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison and be fined up to $20,000 on the felony dissemination charge and up to five years in prison and $5,000 on the felony possession charge.

Once he is sentenced, Lawless will have to register as a sex offender, but it was unclear Tuesday whether that will be for 10 years or the rest of his life, said his attorney, Jeffrey Davidson of East Machias.

According to First Assistant District Attorney Paul Cavanaugh, Calais Police Chief Michael Milburn received in April an anonymous letter that contained a password and log-in codes for MSN and Yahoo Web sites. Milburn entered the sites and discovered they contained “kiddy pornography” that had been downloaded off the Web, Cavanaugh said.

The chief turned the investigation over to Sgt. David Randall of the Calais Police Department, who called in Lt. David Denbow of the Washington County Sheriff’s Department to assist.

The officers connected the Internet accounts to Lawless and questioned him about them.

“He acknowledged he had the e-mail accounts because he had issues in the past,” Cavanaugh said. “He wasn’t looking at the [pictures] for gratification, just to help him deal with his past.”

Police were able to capture 300 images and one video from Lawless’ two Internet accounts, Cavanaugh said. The first assistant district attorney said all of the images were of real people and some were clearly pre-pubescent minors.

Contacted after court Tuesday, Cavanaugh said Lawless at one time worked for a local home for troubled youth. Information about what he did there was not immediately available Tuesday. But Cavanaugh said all the pornography police seized was from Lawless’ home computer.

Davidson said in court Tuesday that since Lawless’ arrest his client had been in counseling and as part of the sentencing hearing next month, the counselor would testify as to Lawless’ history and how far Lawless had come since participating in counseling.