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Sometimes we need to operate on the basis of reality. We on FR don’t know this guy’s whole history, or the details of what was found on his computer. However, unless he has an absolutely squeaky clean past, which seems unlikely, the rest of the info available to authorities very likely makes it reasonable to hold him without bail. If 1) reasonable people with access to all the available information are virtually certain he did it, and 2) the other things he’d be going back to in his regular daily life are not such that keeping him jailed until trial would be seriously destructive to his life, there’s just no good reason to send him out on the streets. What does he do for a living? Does he have a respectable job that he’s still welcome to show up for, and might lose if he can’t show up for a few weeks because he’s in jail awaiting trial? The sort of job that he couldn’t get again after he gets out? And believe me, the ludicrous delays between charges and trials would shrink dramatically if perps who had strong evidence against them that they’d committed a serious crime, were kept in jail until trial. The majority of violent criminals who are let out on bail for months or years pending trial can’t show any evidence of regular gainful employment at a legal activity, and it’s virtually guaranteed that they’ll at least be committing some minor crimes before trial.

Reality matters, because innocent people get killed when we refuse to make decisions based on our best perceptions of reality. What, really, is the chance that this guy is guilty of neither the girl’s murder nor the computer porn charges, and is there any real cost to him if he stays in jail and is later compensated for lost wages (if he has any) in the event that’s he’s found innocent? And just where is he going to go if he’s let out? Presumably not back to the home where he was living with a mother and her (then) three daughters. Who else is prepared to take him in? Anybody who doesn’t have a criminal record of their own? Somehow I doubt it.