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SAN DIEGO — Former San Diego State University football player Nowlin Ewaliko was sentenced to six months behind bars for possessing child pornography.
“He’s in therapy and he’s remorseful and he just wants to get his life back together,” Ewaliko’s attorney Marc Carlos said. “He was a star football player, he was recruited D1 athlete, scholarship, he had a future ahead of him.”
“Counsel has been portraying the defendant as a victim, that is absolutely not what he is, he is not a victim in this case, in fact his conduct perpetuates this horrendous underground industry that targets child victims,” said Ramona McCarthy, a deputy district attorney.
Ewaliko did not have a criminal history prior to this charge.
The charge against Ewaliko came during an investigation into a 17-year-old who accused several people of sexually assaulting her during an off-campus party in 2021. The District Attorney declined to file charges against anyone in that case. However, during the investigation, 10 search warrants were unsealed and detectives found child porn on Ewaliko’s cell phone, according to court documents.
Ewaliko pleaded guilty to the possession of child porn in March.
There is no specific alleged victim in this case.
“He was incredibly young when he started downloading things and looking at things,” Carlos said.
This will have a lifetime of impacts, his attorney said. The judge sentenced Ewaliko to 180 days behind bars, two years of probation, mandated counseling, a requirement to turn over his devices and passwords if authorities request, and he will be required to register as a sex offender.
Carlos said Ewaliko left San Diego State University and has been working in Seattle, where some of his family lives. He said the other portion of his family lives in Hawaii. Ewaliko’s mother and stepmother were in the courtroom Friday.
Also in May, SDSU announced that none of its former students named in the civil suit alleging an off-campus sexual assault were being investigated.
Under a California law that went into effect in 2021, the Department of Justice uses a tiered-approach to require the length of time someone will have to register as a sex offender.
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