With a wife like this, who needs enemies?

[Robot_Arm]

From the article linked in the OP:

The husband, who is not being named, was arrested last month after Hucks and Moore gave his old phone to the Wynnewood Police Department. The phone contained 857 of the graphic pictures, which investigators later learned the two women had taken from the so-called dark web.

Why did they arrest the husband in the first place? If I take some meth, or an unlicensed gun to a police station and say “these belong to my friend, go arrest him”, will they do it? It doesn’t sound like there was ever any evidence that the porn was in his possession.

[nearwildheaven]

Hoo boy, that one is a doozy! Talk about turning the wrong woman down for a date, and having it all go haywire.

[kayaker]

@Max_S

For example in the context of kiddie porn, having more than 100 photos might lead to aggravated possession.

It’s like 85 pictures of kids being sexually abused is almost understandable, but 100? Oh, that’s just too much.

[SpacemanSpiff_II]

@Robot_Arm

Why did they arrest the husband in the first place? If I take some meth, or an unlicensed gun to a police station and say “these belong to my friend, go arrest him”, will they do it? It doesn’t sound like there was ever any evidence that the porn was in his possession.

I’m not at all surprised. People are arrested all the time based on nothing more than other people accusing them of things. Several things in this case:

1. It was in fact the husband’s own phone.
2. Planting child pornography on people’s phones is much much less common than people themselves downloading child pornography to their phones.
3. The person reporting it was the guy’s wife, and she undoubtedly went very light on the fact that she was in middle of a bitter divorce and custody battle, if it even came up at all.

[Robot_Arm]

@SpacemanSpiff_II

I’m not at all surprised. People are arrested all the time based on nothing more than other people accusing them of things. Several things in this case:

It didn’t surprise me either the first time I read it, but as I thought about it, I kinda wondered if it should.
If a jewelry store is robbed, and I walk into a police station with the jewels and say “look what I found in my neighbor’s house”, is that enough to arrest the neighbor? If it’s a crime to possess something (child porn or stolen property), can the person holding the goods just say “these belong to someone else” and be believed?

[Riemann]

@Robot_Arm

can the person holding the goods just say “these belong to someone else” and be believed?

But that isn’t what happened here. A wife discovering something on her husband’s phone is not inherently odd at face value. The standard for arrest is obviously going to be lower than for prosecution, which in turn is lower than for conviction. How much time should the cops spend on investigation before making an arrest in a situation where that potentially gives the suspect an opportunity to erase other evidence, or to warn others involved in a conspiracy? I have no problem with that being a judgment call in which the police have considerable discretion. With a crime like this, you’re weighing potential harm to children against the limited potential harm of arresting someone and later exonerating them. If it turns out they gratuitously “perp walked” the guy in handcuffs in front of dozens of colleagues, of course that would be another matter.

[Robot_Arm]

@Riemann

A wife discovering something on her husband’s phone is not inherently odd at face value.

Not inherently odd, but it’s not exactly direct evidence, either. I’m just wondering if it’s common to arrest people on possession crimes based on this kind of accusation.

@Riemann

If it turns out they gratuitously “perp walked” the guy in handcuffs in front of dozens of colleagues, of course that would be another matter.

I don’t know if they did, or if his name was publicized before it was discovered that the accusation was bogus. Even if they didn’t do those things, holding someone overnight in jail isn’t exactly nothing.

[paulmarkj]

Yes, they would be in the UK. There was a case where a teenage girl photographed a boy urinating in a park becasue she thought it wrong. Her father was furious with the boy and passed the photos to his neighbours as a warning. He was put on the sex offenders register as was the teenage girl.

[Eyebrows_0f_Doom]

I find this very hard to believe if it happened exactly as you stated. Can you link to what case this was?

[Little_Nemo]

@kayaker

Am I the only one who had to do an image search on Garvin County Sheriff Jim Mullett to see how he wears his hair?

I’m not doing any image searches anywhere in the vicinity of this case.

[Chronos]

@kayaker

It’s like 85 pictures of kids being sexually abused is almost understandable, but 100? Oh, that’s just too much.

There has to be some threshold, for cases like Traci Lords, where everyone thought she was of age until it turned out that she wasn’t. The presumption is that a collector of adult porn might accidentally get a few underage pictures. Now, whether 100 is the right value for the threshold, I have no idea.