A 24-year-old Hartselle man will spend three years in prison after pleading guilty to sex crimes against a child in Morgan County.

Zachary Mullins, 24, of Hartselle, pleaded guilty on Dec. 1 to one count of second-degree rape and one count of second-degree sodomy. He was sentenced on Monday to 10 years for each of the two charges, to be served concurrently.

He was ordered to serve three years in prison followed by seven years of probation and registration as a sex offender.

The Attorney General’s Office presented evidence to a Morgan County grand jury in 2009 resulting in indictments against Mullins and another woman who has already been convicted and sentenced for her crimes. Jessica Heather Defoor was sentenced in March 2010 to six years for the class C felony of enticing a child for sexual purposes.

She was ordered to serve two years in prison followed by five years of supervised probation. In addition, she was sentenced to 12 months, to be served concurrently, for second-degree sexual abuse, and she will be required to register as a sex offender.

The crimes of Mullins and Defoor were acts against the same child victim. The matter was discovered when the child shared information with a teacher and school officials reported it to authorities.

Attorney General Luther Strange commended Assistant Attorneys General Kelly Hawkins, Andrew Arrington and Stephanie Billingslea, as well as special agents of his Investigations Division. He also thanked the following agencies for assistance: the Decatur and Hartselle police departments, the Morgan County Child Advocacy Center, the Morgan County Board of Education, the Morgan County District Attorney’s Office, the Morgan County Sheriff’s Office, the Alabama Department of Human Resources, and the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations at Vandenberg Air Force Base, where Mullins was arrested in 2009.