Witness’ motives questioned in child porn trial

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This article was published 14/06/2013 (4682 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A defence lawyer has questioned the motives of a woman whose report to police led to a child porn possession charge against her boyfriend.

Sierra Maynard broke up with her boyfriend two days after she reported to police that she’d found images believed to be child porn on a computer.

But defence lawyer Sarah Inness suggested that records Maynard kept of conversations following the couple’s breakup went beyond an attempt by an upset former girlfriend to get answers.

“You wanted to assist the prosecution, you wanted to assist the police, right?” Innes suggested during her client’s trial, pointing to Maynard’s background as a Child and Family Services worker and current daughter-in-law of a former Crown attorney.

“No,” responded Maynard, who said she was trying to do the right thing and wasn’t trying to get a confession from her ex.

Timothy Leslie William Kille, 28, is on trial in Brandon Court of Queen’s Bench after pleading not guilty to possession of child pornography.

According to the charge against Kille, the images depicted naked and partly naked girls.

The trial began Wednesday when Maynard testified that she found what she believed to be child porn on a desktop computer at the home of Kille’s parents on Nov. 24, 2009.

Kille was house-sitting while his parents were travelling and would use the computer, she said.

Maynard told court that she found images of “little girls” dressed provocatively and some were naked.

The Child and Family Services social work assistant testified that she was signed in on the computer under Kille’s username when she clicked on a folder and found the images.

She made a report to police that same evening, was interviewed the next day and officers seized the computer the day after that.

It’s agreed that a police analysis of the desktop detected 140 child porn images and videos.

A Brandon Police Service forensic identification officer testified that many of the images he found were in a folder associated with a peer-to-peer, file-sharing program that allows the swapping of files over the Internet.

The trial continued Thursday, with the cross-examination of Maynard by Inness.

Maynard broke up with Kille after she found the images but, mistakenly, before police seized the computer.

She testified that she believed the breakup tipped off Kille to the investigation, and she’d witnessed him trying to delete files from the computer.

Police subsequently told her to take notes as the matter could head to court.

Maynard took notes of a series of conversations she had with Kille following the breakup, and audio recorded one of them.

During cross-examination, Innes pointed to changes or additions Maynard had made to the notes over time.

Maynard also agreed that nowhere in her notes, or during testimony at the preliminary hearing in November 2012, did she indicate that she or Kille had described the images found as “child pornography.”

The first time she used the words “child pornography” while describing their conversations was at trial.

Maynard said her notes were an attempt to make sure she was being accurate, and the recording an attempt to back her up if she was accused of lying.

Kille once told her it would be his word against hers, she’d testified.

Thursday’s proceedings ended with Maynard’s cross-examination and the trial has now reached a critical point.

It enters a voir dire to determine the admissibility of statements that Maynard attributes to Kille — statements that are crucial to the Crown’s case.

Lawyers are to submit written argument on the voir dire with a decision expected in August.

Otherwise, the defence has yet to make its case.

There are only hints as to what any defence might be, based on Inness’ cross-examination of Crown witnesses.

So far, she’s questioned how long the computer remained on a police officer’s desk and whether workers doing renovations at the home had access to the computer.

Inness also questioned the forensic identification officer who examined the computer.

He said it wasn’t secured with a password, and anyone using the peer-to-peer program wouldn’t necessarily know what they were downloading until they viewed the files.

And, time and date stamps on computer files don’t necessarly accurately reflect when files are downloaded or viewed.

Possession of child porn carries a sentence six months to five years imprisonment.

» ihitchen@brandonsun.com