Court Finds Evidence Insufficient to Show Defendant was in Possession of Child Porn

The record at trial showed that a detective traced child pornography images on the internet to an IP address at the defendant’s mother’s house. After a warrant was obtained and executed, the mother of the defendant turned over many electronics, including a tablet, for examination.

The tablet contained a picture of the defendant and multiple images of child pornography. An officer testified that the search history on the device contained terms like “PTHC” (pre-teen hard core) and “pedo.” The jury convicted the defendant of 14 counts of sexual exploitation of children.

On appeal, the defendant argued that the evidence did not show that the tablet belonged to him, that he was connected to his mother who turned the tablet over to law enforcement, or that he possessed the tablet after the images were downloaded.

The Court of Appeals agreed, finding no evidence that the tablet was knowingly in the defendant’s possession. The Court also noted that the State failed to show that the defendant took any affirmative action to save or download the images that were found in the tablet’s cache.

The Court noted that forensic examination of the tablet revealed little information concerning the creation, modification, or viewing dates of the images. Only one child pornography image was dated, and that was many months prior to the date of the picture of the defendant. There was also no evidence showing that the defendant was at the residence when the child pornography images were downloaded or shared.

The Court held that the evidence was insufficient to tie the defendant to the possession of the child pornography and that it did not exclude the reasonable possibility that someone else at the residence owned the tablet or downloaded the images.

As a result, the Court reversed the defendant’s convictions.