Mr CV

Mr CV was convicted in June 2005 of possession of indecent pseudo photographs of a child. Mr CV received a sentence of 12 months’ imprisonment suspended for two years and was required to register under the Sex Offenders Act 2003 for five years.

The CCRC received an application for review of the conviction in July 2009.

Following review, the CCRC concluded that at trial the judge did not direct the jury on the significance of indecent images having been deleted and how this impacted on the question of “possession”.

The CCRC considered the Court of Appeal’s findings in the case of R v Christopher Rowe (2008).

In that case, the Court of Appeal found that where deleted files could only be retrieved by application of software and considerable expertise, the defendant had effectively put the material beyond his reach. The defendant therefore did not “possess” the images

In Mr CV’s case, the images were in the unallocated part of a hard drive. They were there as a result of deletion or formatting of the computer, and specialist software was required to retrieve them.

The CCRC decided there was a real possibility that the Court of Appeal would conclude that Mr CV did not possess the images and therefore his conviction was unsafe.

The CCRC referred the conviction in December 2009.

The Court of Appeal upheld the conviction in November 2010.