Judge finds man guilty on child porn charges

Trial of Jesse Aaron Prince, 34, took 7 years to come to court after he absconded while on bail

A man’s attempt to explain away the child pornography found on his personal computer crashed Monday in front a judge in Penticton.

B.C Supreme Court Justice Kathleen Ker said the testimony offered by Jesse Aaron Prince at trial last month was “filled with inconsistencies” and “flies in the face of common sense.”

She then convicted the 34-year-old of four offences: one count each of possessing and accessing child pornography and two counts of importing or distributing child pornography.

Prince is facing a mandatory minimum penalty of one year in jail when he’s sentenced at a later date yet to be determined.

The trial heard Prince was arrested in September 2010 after Mounties executed a search warrant at his Penticton home following an undercover investigation.

Officers infiltrated a peer-to-peer file sharing network used to trade child pornography and traced one of the users to the computer found in Prince’s bedroom.

A forensic examination later turned up 333 images and two videos of child pornography on the computer and an external hard drive attached to it.

It took seven years to get the case to trial, because Prince absconded after initially being released on bail, which was revoked upon his recapture.

Prince testified in his own defence that he had never seen or downloaded child pornography, and that the computer on which the material was found had been freely available for use by other members of his family or visitors in the home. He claimed the computer had only been moved into his bedroom four days before his arrest at the request of his father, who complained about noise from video games Prince played on it.

Based on the testimony of a computer forensics expert who examined the devices, the judge determined Prince’s testimony didn’t hold water and that there were clear indications the machines belonged to Prince alone.

“He would — have the court believe that other users, including his father and nephew, downloaded programs onto the computer and engaged in chats and communications about child pornography, and exchanged such materials in the open living room area of the residence,” Ker said.

“Given the highly illegal nature of such materials, and the graphic nature of them — it is preposterous to suggest that the materials were downloaded in such a public way and left readily available on the (computer) desktop for all to see.”