Posted on 07/02/2009 10:40:29 AM PDT by Maelstorm
The Delaware County man convicted in the 2006 murder of a young coworker returned to court yesterday to plead no contest to having child pornography on his home computer.
In November, William F. Smithson was sentenced to life in prison without parole after being convicted of the murder of Jason Shephard, an intern with the South Dakota scoreboard manufacturer Daktronics. The body of Shephard, 23, was found in Smithson's basement in Thornbury Township on Sept. 21, 2006. Prosecutors said Smithson had drugged the young man from Cavalier, N.D., then strangled him after Shephard fought off his sexual advances.
Police confiscated Smithson's computer, seeking evidence in the murder investigation. They found photo and movie files containing images of boys and girls younger than 18 engaged in various sexual acts.
Smithson was charged separately with sexual abuse of children.
G. Guy Smith, defense attorney, said a number of Smithson's friends had access to the computer and password, and had personal folders on the hard drive. The files containing the pornography were in a folder labeled "Dan," Smith said.
Assistant District Attorney Thomas F. Lawrie said that the images had been accessed 10 days before the murder and that Smithson was living alone at the time.
Smithson will be sentenced at another date, after being transferred to a state prison to begin his sentence in the murder case.
Here is a bit of the background.
“
Defense attorney G. Guy Smith has claimed that Covington brought drugs to Smithson’s Tanguy Road home and “is the person who injected the defendant with at least three syringes of methamphetamines in the hours before Jason Shephard died, and is the person who supplied GHB (a known date-rape drug) to … Shephard and the defendant.”
Authorities have alleged Smithson drugged Shephard and then strangled him when Shephard refused his sexual advances. Shephard’s nude body was wrapped in several bed sheets and bound by several belts when it was found in the basement of Smithson’s home Sept. 21 — three days after Smithson said he had dinner with the intern and dropped him off at the hotel where Shephard was staying in Chester County.
Smithson was a manager of a regional office in Edgmont for Daktronics, an electronic sign business based in Brookings, S.D. Shephard, who was a resident of Brookings, was an intern with the company and in the area on business when he was killed.”
http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2008/10/28/news/doc490689319d514270676892.txt
Mopar rules.
Ping
Delco and Mopar = Obama Motors. I will never buy their sh*t.
Motorcraft = Ford. Ford is not O Motors...yet.
But, but, but we must be compassionate and take into consideration that he must have been abused as a child so that justifies his tendency toward being a sexual predator and murderer. /sarc
Sounds like a hate-crime to me.
This type of stuff probably happens more often than we know with these homo predators.
Hey, if we had the media and political heft of the butt-sex community, we could turn this one story into a nationwide push for anti-homosexual laws.
According to our attorney general, whites, straights, and Christians are not protected by hate crimes.
Only “traditional” victims.
He needs to be charged!
There are a lot more than one. I agree but even our “conservative” media ignore these cases they spend all their time responding for leftist outrage instead of being outraged themselves.
It most certainly does and almost none of it hits the major newsrooms especially this kind of story.
Matthew Shephard, homosexual = BFD! OMG! Christians are evil! Homophobia! Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggghhhhhhhh (for years on end.)
Jason Shephard, heterosexual = zzzzzzz
Oh yes. That is true though. A sizable percentage of gay men have been molested which follows that a sizable percentage of gay men are more likely to molest not that they should not be held responsible for their behavior. Drug use is very common in gay sex. Also the question I have is whether this is the just two men or if this involved a history of doing this kind of thing. It is hard to believe this was an isolated incident.
It was good in the 1960s and 1970s. Great engineers but the UAW thug vermin killed them. It’s over.
Yes and that is the pattern. If they reported the number of homosexual child porn, rape, pedophilia cases with the degree they do others they know that gay rights would go down the toilet quickly. While I don’t believe we can or should focus on this kind of stuff all the time. What troubles me more is that the big kings of talk radio and fox news doesn’t spend more time. They need to stop taking the lead from the leftwing news sources and the Ap. I know Drudge didn’t list this story.
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