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I am Nancy Cohen, wife of Ivan Cohen, who was charged and convicted of possession and distribution of Child Pornography. Last week, Radio, TV and the newspapers stated the court of Appeal decision to uphold the conviction, but, to reduce the sentence from 14 months in jail, to 14 months of house arrest. After 4 years of silence, I, my husband and our children want our side of the story told. This wont change what has happened, but, as a family, we want the community to know the facts that were never told. In July of 1997, and during the raid of our house, over 1, 200 floppy diskettes were seized, along with all our computer equipment, hard drives, CDs, printers, right down to power bars, as well as our VCR, video tapes, and the like. Not one image of child pornography was found in our home, or in any of the seized material.
The computer hard drives were sent to the RCMP forensic labs in Ottawa, where they were dissected in minute detail, and we have since learned, they can find material on a hard drive long after its been deleted by a user. They reported no images found. What was shown in court was images received by an undercover police officer, and they say they can prove the sender to be Ivan. They said it was Ivan, because the ISP address, the information the computer uses as an electronic street address, was the same. As an analogy, this would be like sending a letter through the mail, but, putting someone elses return address on the back. So, where did we go wrong?
Our original Defense council could never persuade the fact that anyone, anywhere, can send anything through someone elses computer and make it appear to be you. Our original Defense council never used the services of a computer expert, since we were told it would be too much trouble to gather the necessary background papers on the expert to present to the court to validate the expert status. Our second lawyer, handling our appeal, Lawrence Greenspon, stated as he read the transcripts that this trial was a witch hunt, and Ivan never had a chance. It was only during the appeal hearing that we realized how wrong this had gone. Since the original lawyer handling our case had not objected to any of the details surrounding evidence presented by the Crown, the appeal court justices could not object either.
During the appeal, one of the judges of the appeal court stated, Unfortunately, Mr. Greenspon, we are not here to retry the case and we must use the facts we have. In fact, the written decision handed down by the appeal court numerous times referenced the lack of the original Defense council to challenge or present information. Id like to review some facts with you. 1. No photographic child pornography images were found in the house. Nothing in print, nothing on hard drives, nothing on floppy drives, CDs or tapes.
Nothing. 2. The police officer, using the nickname Bam-Bam corresponded with the perpetrator of this crime by email as well as chat sessions. No emails or logs were found in our computers to indicate any correspondence with Bam-Bam. 3. It is extremely difficult to remove all traces of material from a hard drive and a forensic investigation would certainly find tell-tales of this type of material if it existed.
Nothing was found. 4. A friend of my eldest son worked at BCONNEX, the internet service provider where we had our internet account. He had access to all the files, login names and passwords, since they were all kept in hardcopy in a unlocked file cabinet. This information and lack of security at BCONNEX was verified at the preliminary hearing by staff of BCONNEX called to testify at that hearing. This information about the Internet Service Provider was never presented at the trial. Further evidence presented to the preliminary hearing proving the existence of child pornography on the newsgroup server of the BCONNEX system was not presented at trial. 5.
This friends name came up during the trial, and the police sought out and found this individual, and brought him in for questioning. He admitted to stealing logins and passwords from Future Shop in Barrie, by going into the store, and emailing them from the store to himself. This person was never called to testify, and the interview was never presented in court, and the jury was never made aware of this information. Why? Our Defense council told us he expected the trial to last one week, he had only charged us for one week, and the trial had gone on for three weeks at that time. This same friend had spent many nights at our home and was sometimes found on our computer, on the internet in the middle of the night after our son has fallen asleep.
He knew all the information about our family that was shared during chat room discussions and served to be the basis for police believing the culprit was my husband. He had a dislike for my husband because he got in trouble at home for missing school, and it was common knowledge the schools attendance voice notification system was installed by my husband. This individual had a falling out with my son over a common girlfriend. This individual had disappeared until the police found him during the trial, and brought him in for questioning. The purpose of the questioning was to discredit my sons testimony of these facts during the trial. Once the interview was completed and the admission was made regarding theft of Future Shops information, the Crown decided not to bring this person to testify.
Instead, a copy of the interview transcript was given to the Defense council, who did not act upon it. Further, because both Crown and Defense were aware of this, this information could not be brought up during the appeal process even though it was not presented at trial. The appeal court can only consider new evidence and then, there are strict rules on the presentation of new evidence during an appeal. Since the Defense and Crown knew this information, it was our loss. 6.
One of the appeal court judges raised the question as to whether the images received by the police officer were actually photographs, or digitally prepared images, not of real people, and questioned if this was looked at during the trail. It was not. 7. Books were found in our bedroom and one was called Nap Time. The book was never read, or seized by the police.
At trial, the police used this book, and the judge referred to this book during his charge to the jury to show the more likelihood that my husband was the perpetrator of the crime. Truly, this is really judging a book by its cover. Lets go back and look at how this book came to be in our home. A close girlfriend of mine Ive known since high school was completing her degree in Criminology, and wanted to be a parole officer.
This book was part of the reading material for her course. She knew my husband was interested in courtroom drama books and gave this one to us. The book is a journalists account of a day-care child abuse case in the U. S.
After the trial and before the sentencing hearing, this book was given to Doctor John Bradford, one of the top Forensic Psychiatrists in Canada, associated with the Royal Ottawa Hospital. Doctor Bradford is recognized by all levels of the court up to and including the Supreme Court of Canada as one of the premiere experts in his field. Dr. Bradford had one of his student read the book. Doctor Bradford stated to me Mrs. Cohen, there is nothing sinister about this book and this book has no relation to Ivans case at all.
The perpetrator in the case is female, and the case does not relate to child pornography in any way. Another book in the same drawer was from the author Max Hanes, a collection of short stories about major criminal cases and their proceedings. Hanes has a weekly syndicated newspaper distribution of these same stories. 8. My husband has maintained his innocence throughout all this.
Judge Weeks stated that since my husband showed no remorse he should be judged harshly. 9. The crown attorney at the jury trial stated only the FBI and the CIA hack computers and the jury accepted this information as fact. There was no opportunity to rebut the crowns summation to the jury. We all know from recent media attention that computer hacking is an epidemic and even a 14 year old can hack into computers, and create havoc for legitimate users. Before the sentencing hearing, the Crown forwarded all the court materials to a criminal psychologist for an assessment. This doctor, without ever meeting or talking to my husband, presented a very damaging report profiling my husband as a very bad person.
To correct this, my husband went to Ottawa for testing by Doctor Bradford. This testing was of our choice, and was not demanded by the...
Free research essays on topics related to: defense council, child pornography, hard drives, internet service provider, police officer
Research essay sample on Internet Service Provider Child Pornography
