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Crown seeking 4 years in Penticton child porn case

Jesse Prince to be sentenced May 7 after guilty verdict for child pornography charges in December
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Detention cells in the Penticton RCMP detachment. Dustin Godfrey/Western News

A Penticton-area man could face up to four years in jail for owning and distributing child pornography, with a sentencing decision from the judge due next Monday.

Jesse Prince was found guilty of possessing and distributing child pornography in December, with Justice Kathleen Ker at the time calling the defendant’s own testimony “preposterous.”

Related: Penticton man found guilty of child porn charges

“Mr. Prince’s evidence flies in the face of common sense. The import of his evidence is that the computer was a family, public computer available to all, although found in his bedroom at the time of his arrest,” Ker said on Dec. 4.

After a Saskatoon Police Service investigation, in which Prince sent an undercover officer 15 files of child pornography, his house was raided when his internet protocol address was used to geolocate him at his father’s house on Green Mountain Road on Penticton Indian Band land.

Seventeen items were seized from his home, including two devices that contained more than 300 files of child pornography.

Crown spokesperson Alisia Adams said the Crown was seeking four years in prison for the charges, which Prince denied in trial.

Defence attempted to argue that it was not Prince’s computer or hardware, despite an initial admission that the hardware did belong to him, but rather it was a family-owned machine. However, a computer forensics expert testified that there only appeared to be one user of the computer.

Prince had been incarcerated as of trial time in December, and a decision on his sentence is expected to be heard on May 7.

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Dustin Godfrey | Reporter
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