A federal judge has cleared at least part of the way for a plea deal involving a former emergency room doctor at the University of Vermont Medical Center, who was arrested last year on child pornography charges.
Eike Blohm also hid a camera in a staff bathroom while working at the Burlington hospital, investigators said. He was later fired.
Blohm, 39, a former resident of South Burlington, would face a possible sentence of up to 11 years in prison under the plea deal.
A resolution of both federal and state cases against Blohm is in the works, but judges in each jurisdiction must agree to the part of the deal that comes before them.
Federal Judge Christina Reiss said at a hearing, held by video Tuesday from federal court in Burlington, that she was willing to accept the plea deal in the federal case.
“I think you actually did a very nice job of balancing the competing aggravating and mitigating factors,” the judge told the attorneys.
Reiss said she reviewed a pre-sentence report prepared by the federal probation department and said the proposed sentence is close to the advisory sentencing guidelines.
According to the agreement, Blohm should be sentenced within the range of 96 to 132 months imprisonment, or eight to 11 years, in the federal case.
“It seems well within the bounds of reasonableness and the court can fashion a justice sentence that is sufficient but not greater than necessary in that range, so I will be accepting the plea agreement,” Reiss said. “We will be going with sentencing.”
No date has been set for that sentencing hearing.
Attorney Lisa Shelkrot, representing Blohm, told the judge that the plan is to resolve her client’s case in state court first, then the federal case.
“The bad news is we don’t have a state sentencing date right now,” Shelkrot said in court. “I was in touch with the court clerk yesterday. They were actually talking about January.”
The plea deal on the state charges calls for Blohm to be sentenced to 80 to 82 months in prison, with the federal and state jail sentences to be served simultaneously.
Blohm was arrested in April 2020, a busy time at the Burlington hospital because of the Covid-19 pandemic that had begun a month earlier. He was arrested after a hospital employee discovered a camera hidden in the emergency department’s unisex bathroom.
The camera had been concealed in an air freshener, investigators said. Video from the camera showed Blohm as he set up the camera, court records stated.
Investigators later discovered 900 videos showing hospital employees in at least two of the medical center’s bathrooms. Court records say a search of his home led to the seizure of several digital devices, some containing child sexual abuse images.
Blohm has been in custody since May 2020.
