A few days ago I wrote about the case of a 16-year-old boy in Arizona, Matt Bandy, who was originally charged with possession and distribution of child pornography. I used his case as an example of an overly zealous prosecutor in that post. My position on the case was based on an article by Wendy McElroy and an episode of ABC’s 20/20. Now the Maricopa County Attorney’s office has gone public with their version of the facts in the case in an article by Deputy County Attorney Rachel Alexander.
She says that the defense mounted a media campaign to misrepresent the facts in the case. She says that the prosecution has incriminating physical evidencce not mentioned in the media coverage of the case. I have no way of knowing who is telling the truth. I don’t have access to the record in the case. But I do know that for some reason Alexander failed to mention the defense claim that they had to go all the way to the State Supreme Court to get the prosecution to give them access to the computer hard drive confiscated from Bandy. If the prosecution’s evidence was so sound why did they try so hard to keep the defense from seeing even a copy of it? It doesn’t add up for me.
Alexander says that they never intended to send Bandy to prison for 90 years. I hope that means that they are more interested in finding and severely punishing the hard-core producers and distributors of child porn than some teenager with raging hormones that viewed, and perhaps shared with friends, a few pornographic pictures. I know that, like in the case of illegal drugs, if no one is willing to pay for child porn there will be no child porn. But I believe that it is impossible to eradicate child porn by punishing the consumers. There are too many of them out there. Law enforcement and prosecutors must attack this problem at the point where the children are actually being abused.
Although I just drew a parallel between illegal drugs and child porn I didn’t mean to imply that their similarities go any further. We can never give up in our efforts to eliminate the abuse of children by pornographers. But I do believe that it is time to admit defeat in the war on drugs. More on that later.
Andrew Thomas’s deputy Rachel Alexander says in the report that Matt Bandy is guilty of the child porn charges that were never even brought to trial. Isn’t that irresponsible on her part? What ever happened to innocent until proven guilty?
It’s astounding: a high level official in the DA’s office is saying that someone is guilty of charges that the DA has dropped!
And why did Andrew Thomas’s office ASK the boy to take a lie detector test and then ignore the results?
And why did Andrew Thomas’s office insist on classifying the boy as a child sexual predator even after it dropped the child pornography charges? The judge thought Andy Thomas’s office’s position so absurd that the judge invited the defense attorney to appeal. Of course, the criminal justice system ruled AGAINST Andrew Thomas’s prosecutorial abuse.
I just read a transcript of an interview between ABC’s 20/20 and Andrew Thomas. The reporter got Thomas to admit that the charges that his office pursued for two years were “inappropriate.” However, less than a week earlier, Andy Thomas has his deputy attorney write that the boy is guilty!
Notice that Fox News felt it necessary to insert an editor’s note because Andrew Thomas’s deputy misrepresented the situation regarding the computer experts. Also, 20/20 makes clear that the prosecutor’s computer expert has absolutely nothing to say about how the images appeared on the family computer. In other words, the prosecution does not have a professional opinion to rebut the family’s computer expert, who in her professional opinion holds that the images came to the family computer via a trojan horse.
I could go on and on with how absurd this situation is, but the bottom line is that Andrew Thomas lacks the judgment to be a district attorney. Imagine if the family had not had the financial resources and strength to fight this out-of-control prosecutor?
If you have the time, I encourage your readers to read the extensive coverage of this case. If I lived in Arizona, I would organize to have Andy Thomas removed from office.
To back up the Bandy’s case. I do know that the prosecution is going after the full 90 years you either accept their plea deal no matter how bad the plea is or risk doing 90 years. Of course you will take the plea deal.
I know of another case in the court system right now with Andrew Thomas and Daniel Strange with another teenager who was 17 at the time who had ZERO images. He is facing mandatory minimum 60 years in prison if he does not accept the prosecutions plea deal also with these horrible plea deals come a life time register as a SEX OFFENDER which equals no life.
The courts are forgetting that these teenagers are the victims! In what situation does a person especially a teen deserve a life time prison sentence for a non violent crime? These kids will do more time than a murderer!
America needs to wake up they are only one click on their computer away from this nightmare happening to them and if you live in the state of Arizona you could be looking at a life time prison sentence for clicking into the wrong web site, or accidentally downloading illegal images. Remember one image equals 10 to 17 years in prison; and if you have two images you are looking at 20 to 34 years. One man is serving 200 years for 20 images. These prison terms must be served consecutively and cannot be commuted by the Governor no parole your life is over.
You say you don’t have any way of knowing who is telling the truth in this case. Yes you do. You can check what Rachel Alexander said yourself. She said in the Fox article (read it again) that computer experts quoted on the Bandy website didn’t have the facts of the case and only were given vague questions by the defense. That is false. You can verify it is a lie.
If you go to the Bandy website you will see the report from their computer expert. You will be able to read a pdf copy of her report. And you will see that her comments are based on a long investigation which she did of the actual hard drive content from the Bandy computer. Alexander claims the Bandy website shows one thing when you can look with your own eyes and see that is false.
You mention Alexander saying that they never intended to send Bandy to prison for 90 years. In fact she knows that if you file the charges they filed the sentence is automatic if found guilty. There is a minimum sentence of 10 years per image in Arizona. When her office filed those charges the sentence automatically comes with them. If they didn’t want that sentence then they file different charges but they filed charges with bring this sentence automatically.
You can find a detail rebuttal to Alexander’s claims here: http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2007/02/they-couldnt-win-in-court-so-they-smear.html
Thanks for your comment CLS. It was delayed in being posted because for some reason it got marked as spam.
My full statement was “I have no way of knowing who is telling the truth. I don’t have access to the record in the case.” By ‘the record’ I meant all the official court papers that have been filed in the case. What people say publicly and what ‘the record’ says are often different. I just meant that I don’t have access to the absolute facts in the case.