What a nightmare. Nothing like panicked “informants” and bad search warrants. Two great tastes that go great together.
From the Des Moines Register:
Age is an issue in trial on porn photos
Ex-principal, according to testimony, admitted viewing the sex sites.
By
APRIL GOODWIN
Register Staff Writer 11/20/2001 Adel, Ia. –
A Perry police detective testified Monday that Arthur Pixler admitted he visited pornographic Web sites, but told police he did not think the women depicted were underage.
Detective Eric Vaughn said the former Perry Middle School principal admitted viewing the sex sites when quizzed about the contents of his computer last year. Pixler said that only he and his wife could view the sites because they had restricted their children’s Internet access, Vaughn said.
Pixler was charged with sexual exploitation of a minor last year after technicians at Cowden Computer and Electronics in Clive discovered thousands of images of nude women on his computer, many of whom allegedly appeared to be younger than 18. His one-day trial was held at the Dallas County Courthouse in Adel.
Lynn Cowden, owner of the computer store, said he thought the pictures depicted women younger than 16.
Cowden testified that he waited two days to call police because he needed to make sure he could live with his decision.
“I tried to determine if this, in fact, was an accidental movement on the Internet,” he said. “But just the sheer numbers of them made me decide it was not.”
Cowden employees contacted Clive police, who sent Detective Robert Somsky to the store to look at the pictures. Somsky said in court that the pictures of young females showed frontal, full-body nudity.
Somsky then gave the pictures to Vaughn, who got a warrant to search and seize Pixler’s computer. Evidence from the search could not be used in the trial because District Judge Paul R. Huscher ruled the warrant was flawed.
Scott Whitney, a private computer expert, testified that it is possible for computers to download pictures without a user consciously saving them to the machine’s memory. It is also possible for a Web site to be automatically linked to other sites, he said, raising the possibility that Pixler accidentally viewed some sites.
County Attorney Wayne Reisetter said in his closing remarks that even if Pixler did not know the pictures were saved in his computer’s memory, he still viewed them and therefore possessed them.
“There is no evidence that someone mysteriously dumped information into it,” he said. “He merely assumed because he no longer saw it on his computer screen that he no longer possessed it.”
Pixler’s attorney, F. Montgomery Brown, said in his closing arguments that Reisetter was trying to convict Pixler of a thought crime. Brown said Reisetter failed to prove Pixler knowingly possessed a picture of any underage female. He also argued Reisetter’s scientific method of determining age of the women in the pictures is unreliable.
Pixler was principal at Perry Middle School for about 10 years. He resigned last year to take a job as superintendent of the Sentral school district in Kossuth County. He quit that position after his arrest.
Pixler could face up to a year in jail if convicted. Brown asked for Huscher to hear the case instead of a jury. Huscher gave no indication when he will issue a ruling.
Reporter April Goodwin can be reached at (515) 284-8360 or [email protected]