Pulaski County jurors will be allowed to hear a 22-year-old Little Rock man's incriminating statements to authorities about downloading child pornography, a circuit judge ruled Monday.
Lou Marczuk, attorney for Vincent McCoy II, had challenged the legality of McCoy's May 2012 interview with sheriff's investigator Chris Cone in part because McCoy's mother, Daphne McCoy, is also a sheriff's deputy.
Judge Leon Johnson ruled that prosecutors may use the 15-minute interview at trial next month.
Vincent McCoy faces up to 90 years in prison on nine counts of distributing, possessing or viewing matter depicting sexually explicit conduct involving a child.
An examination of McCoy's computer turned up a total of nine videos, with five of them being partial downloads, Cone, now a special agent for the attorney general's office, told the judge.
McCoy testified that his mother told him to cooperate with police, who had found nine videos of child pornography on his home computer in May 2012 after Cone was able to download four of the contraband videos over the Internet through the LemonWire file-sharing program McCoy was using.
"My mom said I should talk to them ... tell them what's going on," Vincent McCoy told the judge, saying she told him that cooperating was "the best thing to do."
He also told the judge that he didn't really understand what he was doing when he consented to the recorded interview and agreed to waive his rights to have his lawyer present and remain silent.
"I thought I did [understand], but looking back, I didn't understand what I was doing," McCoy testified. "I just didn't comprehend at the time."
On cross-examination by deputy prosecutor Robbie Jones, McCoy acknowledged that he'd both signed the waiver and orally told the investigator that he understood what he was doing by agreeing to the interview.
During further questioning by the prosecutor, McCoy also said he could not explain what he did not understand about his rights waiver because the interrogation had happened almost three years ago. McCoy also acknowledged that he was not threatened or pressured by the investigator to cooperate.
McCoy also said that he had received a Microsoft certification and acquired his high school diploma before his May 2012 arrest. He said he's worked as a waiter for almost two years.
Jones asked the judge to consider the evidence of his education and computer experience and deny the defendant's suppression motion.
In the recording, played for the judge Monday, McCoy told the investigator a friend of his had suggested using the LemonWire program to acquire cartoon-like pornography that he was interested in viewing.
McCoy also said he did not intend to get child pornography and tried to stop the program from downloading illegal files. Sometimes, they loaded too fast for him to stop, McCoy said on the recording. He said he deleted files that appeared to have illegal content. He told the investigator he had looked at some of the files out of curiosity.
Metro on 04/14/2015