Richard Soule Retired flute professor faces minimum five-year prison term

Richard Soule, a former University of Nevada, Las Vegas flute professor charged with numerous counts of possession of child pornography, has pleaded innocent to the charges in district court.

But in January, Soule struck a plea deal in federal court, pleading guilty to one charge of receipt of child pornography in return for the government not pursuing additional charges.

Soule is scheduled to be sentenced April 17. Court documents say he will have to serve a minimum five-year prison term.

Conrad Hafen, chief deputy attorney general over the Criminal Division and Political Corruption Unit who is prosecuting the case in district court, was surprised to hear that Soule had pleaded guilty in federal court.

"Wow," Hafen said Wednesday. "I was not aware the feds had done anything with it. I knew that they were looking at it, but they had not informed me that they had done anything with it."

Hafen said that he was going to look at the records from the federal court case and that Soule's guilty plea could affect the district court case.

Soule, who was released from jail on $250,000 bail, pleaded innocent in district court in December to 25 counts of possession of child pornography and three counts of misconduct of a public office.

A renowned flutist with the Las Vegas Philharmonic and a UNLV professor for 32 years, Soule retired from the university Oct. 13 after the attorney general's office opened an investigation into the case.

According to prosecutors, a UNLV computer technician found child pornography on a university computer server and traced it to Soule's computer.

The computer technician also observed Soule in the act of downloading pictures.

Investigators found more than 26,000 images of child pornography on his home and office computers and on several portable hard drives, ZIP disks and thumb drives, Hafen said.

Soule's attorney, Conrad Claus, did not return calls for comment.