http://watchingyouwatchingyme-steelmagnolia.blogspot.com/2010/11/if-you-want-truthoperation-ore-research.html
Published on Mon Dec 06 13:38:56 GMT 2010
Police have welcomed a ruling by Court of Appeal judges rejecting a conviction challenge by a Coventry man charged as a result of one of Britain's biggest online paedophile investigations.
Anthony O'Shea, 40, was sentenced to five months' imprisonment in November 2005 on two counts of incitement to distribute an indecent photograph of a child and three of attempting to incite another to distribute an indecent photograph of a child.
He appealed in November this year, but Lord Justice Stanley Burnton, Mr Justice King and Mr Justice Nicol - who stressed that O'Shea's case did not represent a public inquiry into Operation Ore - have announced that they were "entirely confident that the appellant was rightly convicted".
Lord Justice Stanley Burnton said O'Shea "was one of a considerable number of persons" charged with offences relating to child pornography: "They were accused of accessing and downloading child pornography through an internet website located in the USA called Landslide.
"In order to access that pornography, other than on a so-called taster page, it was necessary for the viewer to pay a subscription, and for that purpose to provide his credit card details and certain other information.
"When the Landslide operation was closed down by the American authorities, it was found that there were numerous credit card details belonging to UK residents."
The American authorities gave access to the Landslide computer, or copies of it, to the police in the UK: "Among those whose credit card details were on the Landslide computer were those of the appellant."
0'Shea's case at trial and at the appeal "was and is that he had never accessed the Landslide site, and that the entries on its computer attributed to him must have been made by someone else".
The appeal was essentially about "the contention that Landslide was contaminated by fraud such that the court must doubt whether the appellant was rightly convicted".
Dismissing the challenge, the judge said: "There is no real possibility that a reasonable jury, faced with the evidence we have considered, would not conclude that he was the person responsible for the transactions in issue. We have no doubt whatsoever as to the safety of his conviction."
http://www.ripleyandheanornews.co.uk/news/police_welcome_rejection_of_child_porn_conviction_appeal_1_2835383
