[truth_seeker]

The most damaging pornography in DAW's possession was on a CD. It would be reasonable to assume he purposely obtained this, either by purchase, or by download.

From the trial evidence, I conclude his interest was more than inadvertent image retention, from web-surfing.

I do not contend that mere possession or pornography, alone, makes one a suspect for rape or murder.

The prosecution contends that DAW's possession of illegal minor-child pornography, suggests his interest in young girls, and obviously, he is being tried for the murder of one.

If DAW is in fact an innocent man, he is the "victim" of a series of highly unlikely circumstances. It is more likely he is guilty. The jury is made up of the only people who's opinions matter.

Apparently the images viewed by the jury showed a young girl being raped. Those images belonged to DAW, according to his son. That cannot help but impact the jury.

Your example, about surfing Japanese camera sites gives you an explanation, for images on your computer, should a girl become missing from your neighborhood.

Feldman did not, IMO, offer the jury a reason for not considering this harmful evidence, against his client.

At this point, I'd say Feldman did fairly well, with what he had to work with (not exceptionally well). Dusek did fairly well, muddying the bug evidence, which was the best defense available.

[DoughtyOne]

I can't argue with your logic. You've given a good contrarian view of my comments. I agree that a number of circumstances would have had to come together to frame Westerfield if he didn't do it. The other comment you made about Westerfield's attorney not making the case for the computer photos being mostly innocent, is a good arguement as well. Now, was that a critical oversight on his attorney's part, or was there less of a good explanation for the photos than I surmised there might be? Interesting points to be sure.

[MizSterious]

"The most damaging pornography in DAW's possession was on a CD. It would be reasonable to assume he purposely obtained this, either by purchase, or by download."

I would have to disagree with you here. When I back up my computer, I use CDs. I also back up almost everything. I don't distinguish between pictures I might like, and those I might not like. It all gets backed up on cds. If I had gotten some porn popups or the like on my drive, most likely they would have been backed up on my cds, not because I wanted to keep them, but because I'm fairly lazy as computer users go. Some people back up on zip disks--Westerfield also had zip disks. I do not necessarily assume what was on the cds and zip disks were there because he wanted to keep those images.

[Politicalmom]

That is not right. The "attack" videos were in the DELETED files.

[bvw]

"The most damaging pornography in DAW's possession was on a CD"

In this case the pornography can only be considered to be character evidence. Why? Becuase, as fas as I know, no expert witnesses were brought in to specify that there is either a general link between pornography and murder, or in the case of Mr. Westerfield, a specific pyschological precondition that the pornography would excaberate to probable result of the forceful rape and murder of a young girl.

Yet character evidence was absent from this trial, and I have seen mentioned on these threads that character evidence is not permitted in a murder trial, but may only enter in the sentencing phase.

That Judge Mudd allowed it, and against the most strident objections of advocate Feldman, will I believe, alone provide more than adequate grounds for appeal and reversal upon appeal.