Solicitor found not guilty of child porn charge

Tuesday December 21st 2004

A SOLICITOR accused of possessing child pornography has been found not guilty by a judge's direction.

Sean Foley (38), of Percy Place, Dublin 2, had pleaded not guilty to knowingly having child pornography contained in temporary internet files on a computer hard drive at Merrion Row on May 27, 2002.

The direction - by Judge Yvonne Murphy - to acquit came on day-ten of the trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, following submissions from defence counsel Denis Vaughan Buckley.

Judge Murphy found that there was insufficient evidence that Mr Foley was in knowing possession of images found in the temporary internet folder of his computer.

She said that he had made verbal admissions to gardai that he had accessed a child pornography web site a couple of years earlier and had since viewed similar images while browsing the internet but had not sought such images.

When shown images gardai had forensically recovered from his computer hard drive, Mr Foley denied seeing them before and surmised that web sites had "left a fingerprint" in the temporary folders.

Judge Murphy said that while there was evidence of child pornography on the computer, it had not been established that it was in a mode which was accessible to Mr Foley on the date on the indictment.

She said her judgment did not imply that there would have been sufficient evidence to convict if the date on the indictment had been widened.

More than 70 references to a child pornography website were found on Mr Foley's hard drive. Garda computer expert Det Garda Cathal Delaney told the court that "cookies" (small packages of data sent to a computer by a website to allow the site to more efficiently recognise the user) were sent to Mr Foley's hard drive from a number of child pornography sites. Det Garda Delaney examined internet history files and found addresses of a number of different sites which contain child porn. Later, he agreed under cross-examination by the defence barrister, that none of the floppy discs or CD ROMs seized from Mr Foley's office contained items of evidential value.

Mr Vaughan Buckley said that at an earlier trial evidence given by another detective suggested that temporary internet files are more volatile than files saved in a regular folder, in that they may be deleted automatically if the temporary folder becomes full. Det Garda Delaney accepted the suggestion.

By Bronagh Murphy

? Irish Independent
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/ & http://www.unison.ie/