A good reason not to send someone to gaol:
Sentencing, Judge Newton told Voyce: “Frankly, you deserve to go to prison, but I can’t bring myself to send you to prison, entirely because I think prison would be an appalling experience for you.”
Maybe I’m missing something here, but I thought that was the point…
That was long ago. Now, it’s for ‘rehabilitation’ and it’s hard to see what you could do for a case like this…
“…could have been locked up for nine months after being convicted of 14 counts of downloading indecent images of children.
….was found guilty after an expert performed the same searches in court and found no illegal pictures.”
Perhaps I’m missing something – what was Voyce found guilty of?
Maybe he meant “I think prison would be an appealing experience for you.”
Voyager
Is your question caused by this combination of paragraphs?
– “The court heard a stash of indecent images was found on Voyce’s computer by police investigating another allegation.”
– “She told the trial jury at Manchester Crown Court that she had downloaded child porn by mistake while looking for music on a file sharing site, but was found guilty after an expert performed the same searches in court and found no illegal pictures.”
Voyce claimed to have downloaded the images by mistake from a music file sharing site, but a search of the same site {not her computer) repeated by an ‘expert’ resulted in none of the images. So she was found guilty of downloading the images.
I am curious why there’s no mention of the ‘expert’ going through her ISP’s records to try to identify where the images were downloaded from, which might show repeated or extended visits to the download site.
Maybe it’s subject to ongoing investigation?
“Maybe it’s subject to ongoing investigation?”
It’s a (strong? – I hope) possibility OK, but given deeper investigation of the ISP records might have exonerated Voyce if Voyce had not deliberately downloaded kiddie porn it seems strange to me that an investigation might continue after Voyce’s trial.
I’m not making or implying any accusations here but if the download site is not identified then one of the possibilities is that the kiddie porn was not actually downloaded; if that was the case then the sentencing would appear extremely light. It could of couse be that these particular images are relatively widely available so investigators might not suspect Voyce and/or associates of sourcing/swapping images.
I seem to recall others have used the “oh I downloaded it by mistake” defence. Just how easy is it to download this stuff by accident, I wonder? Even if the images were viewed by accident, they will have been downloaded into the browser cache unless she had the privacy mode switched on – and I don’t know if all browsers have that facility. Without knowing more we can’t really draw any conclusions about Voyce’s guilt or innocence.
Agreed.
One other aspect of the story seems odd in the details given:
– “Kay Driver, defending, told the court that Voyce still maintains her innocence and would be forced to go to a male prison if jailed.”
– “The lawyer said that Voyce, who is legally certified as female, was engaged to be married.”
Gulls or buoys?