The 57-year-old Granite City man is a registered sex offender. He could have faced up to 14 years in prison. In January he pleaded guilty to charges of soliciting child pornography, and on Thursday he was sentenced by Associate Judge James Hackett.

The 28-year-old woman came to Atwood's house in December of 2005 and Atwood gave her a camera and described how he wanted the girl to pose. The woman called police, who set up a recorded conversation between herself and Atwood at Atwood's house.

Madison County Assistant State's Attorney Neil Schroeder played the tape at the sentencing. Atwood is heard saying he would give the woman from $100 and $200 for the photos and would sell them for $500. He also told her to bring the 9-year-old back to his house so he could "see your daughter naked in front of me right now, so I know you're not scamming me."

Atwood asked Hackett for a lighter sentence. He said he never meant for the woman, with whom he had had an affair, to take any photographs of the girl with the camera. "I said a lot of things on those tapes I didn't mean," he said. "I was trying to scare her."

Atwood asked that his sentence be no more than four years so that he could care for his wife of 10 years. His wife, he said, suffered from breast cancer and has been unable to work. Atwood said that for the past 14 months she has depended on his $1,000-a-month disability check.

Atwood testified that he has had two heart attacks and suffers from sleep apnea and diabetes. He told Hackett that he must carry an oxygen tank with him "24 hours a day, seven days a week." His medical condition, he said, prevents him from walking, running, or engaging in strenuous activity.

Hackett said he took into consideration Atwood's two previous sex-related convictions, in 1977 and 1984, and the fact that he was convicted in 2003 of being a sex offender living within 500 feet of a public park.

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