Beaver v. State

The trial court did not err in allowing the jury to view 10-12 second portions of child pornography videos found on a computer in the defendant's residence rather than still shots taken from them.

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Following a jury trial in November 2012, Gregory Beaver was convicted of 15 counts of sexual exploitation of children and sentenced to 20 years, 15 to serve. Beaver timely filed a motion for new trial, which the trial court denied. On appeal, Beaver asserts that 1 the evidence was insufficient to sustain his convictions and 2 the trial court erred in allowing the jury to view portions of pornographic videos recovered from his computer. Finding no error, we affirm.

Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdict,1 the evidence shows that Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office Investigator Jeffrey Roe conducted investigations over the internet as a member of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. As part of his investigations, Roe worked to identify computers that contained suspected child pornography. In particular, the task force members looked for “file sharing” programs, which allow computers on the same network to access content from other computers. LimeWire, which was later confirmed to have been installed on the computer used by Beaver, was such a program. At trial, Roe explained how LimeWire works, including how users search for and download particular files. He also explained that each file has a “hash value,” which is a numerical value unique to every file, much like a digital fingerprint. As a result of his investigation, Roe identified an IP2 address that was utilizing the LimeWire program to access files that he suspected contained child pornography. The IP address belonged to Judy Vess, Beaver’s mother. At that time, Beaver was living at his mother’s home, along with his wife, Christina Deal, and her young daughter.

Beaver v. State

The trial court did not err in allowing the jury to view 10-12 second portions of child pornography videos found on a computer in the defendant's residence rather than still shots taken from them.

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