This is a great opening paragraph from a recent appellate case discussing possession of computer porn:

"Appellant came to the attention of the Canton Police Department when he placed a nude photograph of himself into the lab coat pocket of a pharmacy employee. Appellant wrote his email address and phone number on the back of the photograph and asked the employee to contact him. The employee reported the incident to the Canton Police Department."

The case is well worth reading because it finally provides a coherent discussion of how a criminal can possess an electronic file that is merely viewed on the computer screen and not formally downloaded onto a drive.

For the opinion, click here.

Have you tried a case like this? Were you able to convince the jury that the defendant possessed the files?

I've got a case like that pending on appeal. I'm glad to see this opinion come out; I had a heck of a time finding citations! Basically, the defendant admitted to looking at the pictures but said he never intentionally downloaded them, that was just "incidental to viewing." To add to the challenge, there had been at least some attempt to delete a lot of the pictures, and the expert testified that an "average user" would probably think they were gone. Fortunately, our defendant was a computer programmer with a long history of looking at kiddie porn, so the jury didn't buy it.

To anyone looking at this issue, there's a very good law review article called "Don�t Cache Out Your Case: Prosecuting Child Pornography Possession Laws Based on Images Located in Temporary Internet Files" (19 Berkeley Tech. L.J. 1227, 1253 (2004), by Ty Howard). It gives a good breakdown of how the feds have looked at the issue. It was very helpful as I tried to put together my arguments on appeal.

Let us know how it turns out.