A judge will take four months to consider the evidence in a Fond du Lac child pornography trial.
The accused, Aiden Pratchett worked with the RCMP when his online file sharing was flagged last fall.
Ever since he was charged with accessing and possessing child porn in late 2014, Pratchett has maintained his innocence. That was no different when he took the stand on Thursday.
Pratchett was defense’s only witness at the four-day long trial.
Defense’s initial questions were only about his guilt, to which Pratchett said he was innocent of the charges.
Crown prosecutor Michael Segu then asked a series of questions, mostly about Pratchett’s main computer tower, which contained three encrypted hard drives. The red tower was protected by a 23-digit password that couldn’t be unlocked even after three-trillion attempts by an Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) team in Saskatoon.
Pratchett’s wife had said was “locked up like Fort Knox” when she spoke with him in a video the court had viewed earlier – the two had been detained with an ICE team flew to Fond du Lac in October of 2014.
On the stand, Pratchett admitted to being a private man, who likes to be in control, and that he didn’t want people on his computer.
He has never provided the passwords for his computer’s tower, and as a witness, said he couldn’t remember them now.
In Pratchett’s defense counsel’s closing arguments, lawyer Mark Brayford told court when it came to providing access to seized computers and storage devices, his client did everything he was legally required to.
Pratchett has never been able to come up with another suspect for who could have downloaded the child porn that was flagged by investigators.
But Brayford says that’s not defense’s responsibility.
Segu argued that the evidence shows Pratchett is the only one who could have been on his computer when child porn was shared. He outlined factors including Pratchett’s extensive computer knowledge, and his custom settings proved the flagged files were downloaded and shared on that specific computer.
Brayford did not dispute that the files were on Pratchett’s computer.
He did dispute Segu’s argument that he proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Pratchett is the one who put them there and accessed them. Segu pointed to the evidence that the child porn files on the computer were only ever flagged by ICE’s computer system when Pratchett was not at work. Specifically, Segu pointed to evidence from the day the ICE team flew to Fond du Lac. He said at that time, the ICE system was flagging activity but every single person with access to Pratchett’s online network was accounted for – and the only person in Pratchett’s home at that time was him.
Brayford said the Crown had Pratchett’s shift schedule, but had never gathered further evidence to the actual hours Pratchett put in on the flagged days.
He also pointed to video evidence from Pratchett’s original detainment. At that time, he told investigators he rarely shuts off his computer which would mean other people would be able to access its contents without needing to get past his complex passwords and encryption.
Even with the considerations now before a judge, when asked to comment outside court, Brayford and Segu declined.
The decision will be rendered in Prince Albert Provincial Court on Feb. 24, 2016.