Pennsylvania judge rejects Ritter's bid for a new trial

PHOTOGRAPHER: The Associated Press

A former U.S. weapons inspector convicted in an online sex sting is appearing today in a northeastern Pennsylvania courtroom to learn his sentence.

Fifty-year-old Scott Ritter of Delmar, N.Y., exchanged explicit messages with a detective posing as a 15-year-old girl, then performed a sex act on himself in front of a webcam. He testified in his own defense that he believed the person he met in a Yahoo! chat room in 2009 was an adult acting out her own fantasy. A jury convicted him in April.

Ritter’s attorney asked for a new trial on Wednesday, citing an appeals court ruling from New York that records from two prior incidents in 2001 should not have been unsealed and provided to Pennsylvania prosecutors. Monroe County Judge Jennifer Sibum rejected the request and ordered Ritter’s sentencing hearing to begin.

Prosecutors have called an expert to testify that Ritter is a sexually violent predator under Pennsylvania’s version of Megan’s Law.

Ritter was one of the U.N.’s chief weapons inspectors in Iraq from 1991 to 1998.