GREENEVILLE, TENN. — This is an official press release from the U.S. Department of Justice (USAO - Tennessee, Eastern), published as received.

GREENEVILLE, Tenn. – On September 24, 2026, Ronnie Lee Miller, 53, of Johnson City, Tennessee was sentenced to 150 months imprisonment by the Honorable Clifton L. Corker, United States District Judge, in the Eastern District of Tennessee at Greeneville.  Following his imprisonment, he will be on lifetime supervised release and will be required to register with state sex offender registries and comply with special sex offender conditions.

Miller pleaded guilty to one count of possession of CSAM, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(5)(B) and (b)(2), and to violating his term of supervised release.

According to filed court documents and statements made in court, Miller was previously sentenced to prison for 110-months for possession of CSAM in 2009 in the Eastern District of Tennessee.  Upon his release from imprisonment, in November of 2017, Miller began serving a term of federal supervised release in the Eastern District of Tennessee that required him to submit truthful monthly reports to his supervising probation officer as well as participate in sexual offender treatment.

In April of 2025, during a routine sex offender check-in, detectives with the Johnson City Special Victims Unit discovered that Miller was in possession of two cellular phones, three memory cards, and three USB drives.  Across the different devices and storage media, detectives located thousands of CSAM images and videos.  

This case was investigated by the Johnson City Police Department Special Victims Unit.

Assistant United States Attorney Thomas McCauley represented the United States.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims.  For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.

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