Law Enforcement Victimizes Innocent Citizens

It had to be hell to be charged with possession of child pornography. In April, 2006, Scott Forbes was charged with nineteen counts of possession, all felonies.

Images were found on a computer in the Montello, WI office of the Marquette County Chemical Dependency Service. Forbes had not had access to the computer for a year. When authorities found documents that showed Forbes had once used the computer. That was all authorities needed.

Some of the pictures were well known to law enforcement sources and had been circulated since the 1990’s. These might have been holdovers from the time that federal authorities were sending child porn to individuals.

So, with only the evidence that Forbes had once used the computer, Marquette County Prosecutor, Richard Dufour, charged him. The charges were sufficient for a long prison sentence and a lifetime on the registry.

His employer, Catholic Charities of Madison, cowardly fired him before the charges were filed. He was on his own to finance his defense.

Scott is not the only innocent person to be caught up in the zeal to accuse and prosecute.

Michael Fiola was charged by the State of Massachusetts for possession of child pornography in 2007. Fiola was given a workplace replacement computer in 2006 that was generating large wireless activity. At the time, he worked for the Massachusetts Department of Industrial Accidents (DIA). In his prior seven years at the DIY, there had been no such activity. It started with the replacement machine. The DIY showing its own ignorance and prejudgment fired Fiola and reported their claim to authorities who charged first and investigated later.

It turns out the machine was infected before the DIA assigned it. Even prosecution experts stated that the images on the machine were due to malevolent software and outside the control of the computer user. Meanwhile, he lost his sunny day friends and incurred the enmity of the judgmental.

The DIA supplied the machine in its susceptible condition but still refuses to take responsibility. In reality, both the DIA and the Massachusetts legal authorities are responsible for the false charges and the subsequent damage to an innocent citizen.

For Forbes, the process dragged out. The offense date in the complaint was 01 October, 2005. Forbes was charged on 03 April, 2006. His court date was rescheduled several timesThe State can afford delays, but we mere mortals have bottoms to our pockets.

One matter that came to light be fore the trial was that investigators had falsified or enhanced information on some of the search warrants.

At one point, Prosecutor Dufour offered a plea deal that included dropping all but one of the charges. Forbes did not accept. This was wise since once a person pleads they are seen as guilty by the courts. The real world no longer matters. If the prosecutor realizes that the case is weak to nonexistent, it is unethical to proceed, but that doesn’t seem to faze many district attorneys. The day before trial, Dufour dropped two of the charges.

A jury found Forbes not guilty of the remaining seventeen charges on 16 October, 2008.

Even with the expense and time involved, The accused is much better off than being stuck with a bogus plea that would be an anchor in his life. But, the expense is something that he would not have had to face if the police investigators and prosecution had not been slipping over their drool and performed a thoughtful and competent investigation and evaluation in the first place.