TAMPA – A Tampa man was sentenced to 30 years in prison Wednesday, two months after a jury convicted him of charges that he coerced an Ohio woman into e-mailing him sexually explicit pictures of her 4-year-old daughter.

Prosecutors said Johnny Fleming, 38, [pictured] convinced the woman in an online chat that he was Tampa Bay Buccaneers standout cornerback Ronde Barber.

The sentencing followed more than two hours of testimony from law enforcement officers testifying for the prosecution and from several family members for the defense.

Fleming’s family portrayed him as a hardworking family man who never had been in trouble with the law. His mother, Grace Fleming, testified that months before his crime, her son became depressed after learning his sister had died.

Fleming’s sister, his mother said, died in the Sept. 11 attacks, but family members hid that from him. In June 2004, he was trying to locate his sister and found out she was dead.

Fleming’s wife and 14-year-old stepdaughter said his personality drastically changed after learning of her death.

He became nervous and sad, said his wife, Lia Fleming. Sometimes, he would stay up all night on the computer, leaving the next morning to go to work as a collections clerk for Chase Manhattan.

After the witnesses testified, Judge Nick Nazaretian allowed Fleming to hug them.

Fleming cried and dug his face into his mother’s shoulder, telling her he loves her. The scene repeated as he hugged and kissed his wife, his stepdaughter and his 10-year-old daughter.

Speaking on his own behalf, Fleming told the judge he regretted the online conversation.

“The conversation was wrong,” he said. “It was lewd and obscene.”

At the April trial and at Wednesday’s sentencing, Fleming said he was role-playing with the woman in August 2004 and did not expect her to send the photographs.

Assistant State Attorney Tom Palermo challenged that assertion.

Palermo showed the judge a transcript of an online conversation Fleming had with the woman.

In the transcript, Fleming asks her to digitally penetrate her daughter and send him a picture. When the woman wrote that she sent one, he wrote back, asking for pictures that also show the girl’s face, according to the transcript.

Fleming told the judge that he deleted the pictures without looking at them. He said he only opened one and was horrified at what he saw.

The woman, whose name is not being published to protect her daughter, is serving a life sentence in Ohio in connection with this crime, prosecutors said.

Mike Yunker, an Ohio police detective, testified that the girl is being raised by her father and grandparents.

“This little girl will go through life wondering what possessed her mother to commit such a heinous act,” he said.

The answer, Yunker said, is that people such as Fleming prey on others.