Jury deadlocks in child-porn trial

LINDA SATTER
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

A mistrial was declared Friday night when a federal jury deadlocked on the fate of Batesville mechanic Christopher Shawn Deaton, 32, who is accused of possessing and sending child pornography over the Internet.
The government contended during Deaton's 3-day trial that he was aware of pornographic images on his work computer and another computer he used at the garage of a fellow mechanic.
Deaton, represented by attorney Will Bond of Jacksonville, contended that although he had knowingly downloaded adult pornography, and had once accidentally glimpsed a picture of child pornography while viewing a series of photos sent over the computer, he thought he had deleted the child pornography.
The FBI traced the photos of the pre-pubescent children to the other mechanic's computer with the help of an Internet service provider after Batesville residents began complaining that photos of children were being distributed by a computer user named Elaine Moore, who claimed the children were her grandchildren and that she prostituted them.
An investigation revealed that Moore was actually a man named John "J.D." Gerrald, 42, of Batesville, and the children weren't related to him. Gerrald, indicted along with Deaton, pleaded guilty as Deaton's trial began, agreeing to testify against Deaton in exchange for leniency.
Gerrald, who admitted being a collector of child and adult pornography, told jurors that he created the grandmother character because "more people tend to talk to a woman than a man." While masquerading as the children's grandmother, he would describe various sex acts he said the children enjoyed.
But Gerrald said he never shared any of his child pornography collection with Deaton, who Gerrald said claimed to enjoy "kiddie porn" and ignored Gerrald's warnings to remove the child pornography from the friend's business computer he used.
Deaton, himself the father of young children, testified that he was "in no way" a fan of child pornography, that Gerrald never gave him any such warnings, and that he didn't know a hard drive he copied onto another computer contained child pornography, nor did he know how to access it.
He suggested that someone else who had access to his computer had downloaded the illegal images. He noted that several other people, including two or three truck drivers, frequented the garage and sometimes used the computer to play games. Bond noted that Gerrald had worked on the computer of the other mechanic and could have placed the images on it.
An FBI agent testified that he found the pornographic images of children tucked into a "sub-folder" on Deaton's computer titled "young" and that the images appeared to have been stored in an organized manner.
U.S. District Judge George Howard Jr., who presided over Deaton's trial, hasn't yet scheduled a retrial.

This article was published on Tuesday, January 18, 2000

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