\nAPRIL GOODWIN<\/a>
\nRegister Staff Writer 11\/20\/2001 Adel, Ia. –<\/p>\nA Perry police detective testified Monday that Arthur Pixler\u00a0admitted he visited pornographic Web sites, but told police he did not think\u00a0the women depicted were underage.<\/p>\n
Detective Eric Vaughn said the former Perry Middle School principal\u00a0admitted\u00a0 viewing the sex sites when quizzed about the contents of his\u00a0computer last year. Pixler said that only he and his wife could view the sites\u00a0because they had restricted their children’s Internet access, Vaughn said.<\/p>\n
Pixler was charged with sexual exploitation of a minor last year after \u00a0technicians at Cowden Computer and Electronics in Clive discovered thousands\u00a0of images of nude women on his computer, many of whom allegedly appeared to be\u00a0younger than 18. His one-day trial was held at the Dallas County \u00a0Courthouse in Adel.<\/p>\n
Lynn Cowden, owner of the computer store, said he thought the pictures\u00a0depicted women younger than 16.<\/p>\n
Cowden testified that he waited two days to call police because he needed\u00a0to make sure he could live with his decision.<\/p>\n
“I tried to determine if this, in fact, was an accidental movement on the\u00a0Internet,” he said. “But just the sheer numbers of them made me decide it was\u00a0not.”<\/p>\n
Cowden employees contacted Clive police, who sent Detective Robert Somsky\u00a0to the store to look at the pictures. Somsky said in court that the pictures\u00a0of young females showed frontal, full-body nudity.<\/p>\n
Somsky then gave the pictures to Vaughn, who got a warrant to search and \u00a0seize Pixler’s computer. Evidence from the search could not be used in the\u00a0trial because District Judge Paul R. Huscher ruled the warrant was flawed.<\/p>\n
Scott Whitney, a private computer expert, testified that it is possible for \u00a0computers 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\u00a0linked to other sites, he said, raising the possibility that Pixler\u00a0accidentally viewed some sites.<\/p>\n
County Attorney Wayne Reisetter said in his closing remarks that even if \u00a0Pixler did not know the pictures were saved in his computer’s memory, he still\u00a0viewed them and therefore possessed them.<\/p>\n
“There is no evidence that someone mysteriously dumped information into\u00a0it,”\u00a0 he said. “He merely assumed because he no longer saw it on his\u00a0computer screen that he no longer possessed it.”<\/p>\n
Pixler’s attorney, F. Montgomery Brown, said in his closing arguments that \u00a0Reisetter was trying to convict Pixler of a thought crime. Brown said\u00a0Reisetter failed to prove Pixler knowingly possessed a picture of any underage\u00a0female. He also argued\u00a0 Reisetter’s scientific method of determining age\u00a0of the women in the pictures\u00a0 is unreliable.<\/p>\n
Pixler was principal at Perry Middle School for about 10 years. He resigned \u00a0last year to take a job as superintendent of the Sentral school district in\u00a0Kossuth County. He quit that position after his arrest.<\/p>\n
Pixler could face up to a year in jail if convicted. Brown asked for\u00a0Huscher to hear the case instead of a jury. Huscher gave no\u00a0 indication\u00a0when he will issue a ruling.<\/p>\n
Reporter April Goodwin can be reached at (515) 284-8360 or goodwina@news.dmreg.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What a nightmare. Nothing like panicked “informants” and bad search warrants.\u00a0Two 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":53168,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[278],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50798"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}