cnet: Electronic evidence anchors porn case
Former Xerox engineer Larry Benedict has been sentenced to 4 years in prison on child pornography charges, despite documentation showing that the evidence against him was tampered with in police custody. Allegations that evidence was fabricated will not be examined because Benedict chose to plead guilty.
Benedict pleaded guilty to the child pornography charges in June 2001 after being refused full access to the hard drives, floppy disks and tape backups that federal agents seized in an evening raid on his home in February 1995. Because no physical child pornography was found, the case against Benedict rests entirely on the contents of the electronic storage media.[...]
[US District Judge David Larimer], a former prosecutor, also refused to hold a hearing to explore whether evidence against Benedict was fabricated. “Just because Benedict now believes his chances at trial might be more favorable than they would have been in June 2001, is no reason to allow withdrawal of the guilty plea,” Larimer said.
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Prosecutors have never turned over all the electronic evidence in the case to the defense team, including vital bit-for-bit copies of the tapes that allegedly contained child pornography.
But, according to court documents, the electronic information prosecutors did divulge shows that files were added and deleted from computers while they were in police custody, and it took prosecutors nearly five years to discover illegal image files on Benedict’s PC in an obvious, top-level directory titled “GIF.”