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| A man’s got to know his technical limitations |
Former stand-up comic Michael Silk was charged with six offences of possessing extreme porn featuring dodgy goings-on between humans and animals. Silk denied the charges which, it was alleged, had been committed in May 2009.
For the prosecution, Kent Online reports, Alex Wilson told the judge at Maidstone Crown Court last Tuesday that, following discussions with an expert, he would offer no further evidence as he believed there was no realistic prospect of conviction.
The judge entered formal not guilty verdicts.
A CPS spokesperson told us: It was also apparent from the evidence that the defendant was not computer literate. At the time the defendant’s computer was seized the material was held in the computer’s internet cache. There was no evidence that the defendant had saved the images or sought to keep them. In order to ‘possess’ the images in that state the law requires knowledge that the images exist and the means or know-how to retrieve them.
The defendant was in possession of the images at the point in time that he accessed them and viewed them. On the evidence available in this case it was not possible to prove that he did so at some time after the Act came into force. We could not therefore proceed with the prosecution and we accordingly offered no evidence.
Simply deleting an image will not save you if you are computer literate enough to retrieve it. Contrariwise, it appears that if you are a total computer illiterate, that might be enough to get you out of a fix.
…Read the full article
Comment: Punishing the Not Guilty
From Harvey
Yet again we find a person charged and hauled into court only to find the prosecution offer no evidence. NO EVIDENCE.
I wish judges would be more condemning of prosecutors for bringing charges before looking to check that the evidence stacks up as it seems to be happening more frequently. And the CPS fuckwits who do decide to prosecute should be named so we can see who they are and whether they are just dumb or are serial offenders. No surprise that this was, yet again, Kent police and prosecutors, who have form when it comes to “enhancing” the evidence, prosecuting first and asking questions later.
