No child pornography found on Penn’s computer; the prosecution rests its case
BVI News court correspondent - Friday, February 25th, 2011 at 2:21 PM
The Prosecution has rested its case in the Andre Penn rape trial. A total of 12 persons were called to take the witness stand in the trial.
This morning the Director of Public Prosecutions Elizabeth Hinds called the final witness for the crown, Scott Douglas, a computer forensic expert based in London. He testified by way of a video conference connection.
In his testimony, Douglas shared that he was instructed to examine the hard drive of Penn’s computer for sexually explicit content accessed between 2006 to 2008 to find out if there was any child pornography on the computer.
Douglas said his investigations revealed no child pornography on the hard drive, but pornographic sites were accessed in 2008 and not 2006 – 2007.
He explained the method used for his examination. It included the removal of the hard drive from the computer and connecting it to a forensic computer which was neither connected to the internet nor allowed data to be transferred to the hard drive, then he exported the internet history.
Douglas said he submitted two reports after examining the hard drive. One report detailed the method of examination and the other included the internet history. He assured that the report was an accurate record of what was taken from Penn’s hard drive.
The report showed that the site “backpage.com” was accessed at multiple times in 2008.
The DPP inquired if the other noted sites were pornographic and Douglas confirmed that the sites were pornographic.
Defense attorney Dale Hamilton pointed out that “backpage.com” is a webpage which leads to information on a wide range of topics. He inquired of Douglas whether the websites for PBS kids and cartoon network were accessed in 2006 and 2007, Douglas confirmed this as well.
Douglas, in response to one of Hamilton’s questions, noted that he was unable to determine the amount of time spent particular websites or how many days in 2008 porn was accessed. He added that anyone who used Penn’s password to access his computer would be recorded as the user “Andre”.
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