Court of Appeal

Published date01 October 2011
Date01 October 2011
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1350/jcla.2011.75.5.722
Subject MatterCourt of Appeal
Court of Appeal
Planting Child Pornography: Perverting the Course of
Justice
Keywords Indecent photograph; Perverting the course of justice; Plant-
ing of evidence; Sentencing; Guidelines
The appellant, W, was convicted after trial of three offences. The f‌irst was
doing acts tending and intended to pervert the course of justice (a
common law offence) and the second and third counts were possession
of indecent photographs of children (contrary to s. 160 the Criminal
W worked at a school where he was supervised by a person known as
T. T had been arrested some four years previously on suspicion of the
possession of indecent photographs of children, the particulars being
that 177 images were found on his work computer. T was suspended
from school and investigated by the police, but argued that he had been
‘set up’ by someone, naming W and another person.
A forensic examination of the computer found that the images had all
been placed on the laptop from another piece of computer media (as
distinct from downloading them) and that the images were all loaded
onto the machine in about 30 seconds and were placed in hidden folders
so that it was unlikely that they would be discoverable by T or capable
of being easily erased. W then contacted the police anonymously to
report T.
After 18 months the police were satisf‌ied that T was not guilty of any
crime, but by this time he and his wife had suffered considerably with
press comment, suspension from work and hostility from members of
the public who believed him to be a sex offender. When T returned to
work he was shunned by staff who, erroneously, believed that he was
responsible for the material. The court accepted that his life had been
ruined.
W was traced by the police after he made a series of anonymous
telephone calls. The number was traced to a pay-as-you-go SIM card
that had been used in three telephones. W had not realised that it was
not just the SIM card that leaves a forensic trace, but also the telephone
itself, and one of the telephones was traced to W. Two witnesses were
also adduced who testif‌ied that at a barbecue with W they had heard W
say that he was going to install child pornography onto T’s computer and
report him to the police. When arrested T refused to admit that he was
responsible for transferring the images and sought to implicate others
instead.
W was a man of 40 years of age and was of previous good character.
The pre-sentence report indicated that he still denied his involvement.
348 The Journal of Criminal Law (2011) 75 JCL 348–360
doi:10.1350/jcla.2011.75.5.722

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