308 Indecent Images of Children were identified by Police on a computer that contained 4 hard drives. The Defendant was charged with making and possessing the images. The Defendant denied the charges and claimed that whilst he had frequently downloaded and browsed adult pornography, he was unaware of the presence of the unlawful images.
The evidence was obtained from the Police and examined by an Athena Forensics Computer Forensic Expert who found that the indecent images of children were located within folders that had been organised, however, they also contained a large number of adult pornographic images and evidence was identified to suggest that unlawful images had been stored amongst large group of lawful adult material.
Other indecent images had been stored automatically within system image cache files and would not have been accessible by the normal user.
The Prosecution offered no evidence on the morning of the trial following disclosure of our computer forensic expert report and various case conferences with the expert at court and the charges were dropped.
