A 64-year-old North Little Rock man now faces up to 300 years in prison with his conviction Tuesday on child-pornography charges after prosecutors showed a judge portions of 30 videos found in his home that showed children, including toddlers, forced to perform sexually explicit acts.
David Wayne Davis, a married father of three and grandfather to seven, did not testify during the daylong trial before Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen.
At Davis' request, the judge decided the case without a jury. Griffen deliberated about 22 minutes before announcing his verdict.
Davis is free on $25,000 cash bail until his sentencing on Sept. 11. Each count of possessing matter depicting sexually explicit conduct involving a child is a Class C felony that carries up to 10 years in prison.
The recordings, some of which showed toddlers being raped, were found on two computers and two flash drives in the family home on Sierra Madre Drive.
Investigators from Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge's Cyber Crimes task force had traced the illegal recordings over the Internet and seized the equipment during a July 23, 2015, raid.
Davis was arrested about six weeks later after an examination of the equipment.
Defense attorney John Wesley Hall derided the case against his client for completely lacking any hard evidence that Davis even knew there was child pornography on the computer equipment.
"The issue is whether he knowingly possessed [illegal recordings] and whether the state can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt," Hall told the judge in his closing remarks.
There was proof that at least five other people in the home, including Davis' wife, brother-in-law and three visiting grandchildren regularly used the computer where 12 of the videos were found, Hall said.
He said investigators also didn't bother to look for fingerprint evidence that could have shown whether Davis handled the equipment, and they also failed to explore that one of Davis' grandchildren, a 16-year-old Tennessee boy, could have downloaded the videos.
But the judge said he was persuaded by the arguments of Assistant Attorney General Jill Irwin, who said the location of the videos was proof that Davis had downloaded them.
Flash drives, together containing 17 videos, were found in Davis' bedroom dresser drawer, Irwin noted.
Aside from the videos, the thumb-sized drives also contained personal documents relating to Davis, she said, including his resume, materials about his retirement and a letter entitled "I am Dave Davis."
Two of the videos were found in the same computer folder that held his retirement materials, Irwin told the judge.
When questioned by investigators, Davis was the only person in the home who displayed sufficient skills to operate the computer, including downloading the Ares Galaxy file-sharing program used to acquire the illegal recordings, Irwin said.
The investigation showed that the Ares program had been used to search for files relating to the terms molested, molestation, incest, Lolita and toddler, which are all key words in computer searches for child pornography, she said.
Irwin urged the judge not to be swayed by the suggestion that Davis' teenage grandson could have downloaded the materials. She said the teen, whose whereabouts are currently unknown, is a troubled young man who makes a "convenient scapegoat."
But evidence that child porn had been viewed on a computer when the boy was eight years old eliminates him as the source of the illicit recordings, Irwin said.
Showing the videos to the judge took about 22 minutes. Special Agent Chris Cone from the task force played just enough of each recording, from five seconds to 14 seconds, to show that each video had a child or children being raped, sodomized or forced to perform sexually explicit acts.
The file names for most of the videos included the acronym PTHC, which stands for pre-teen hard-core, Cone told the judge.
Before showing the recordings, prosecutors asked that the court be cleared of everyone but essential personnel since the law criminalizes even the viewing of child pornography.
But the judge declined, citing the importance of trying criminal defendants in open court.
"By that logic, it is illegal for me to see them," he told the prosecutors.
Griffen said he could not deny the public an opportunity to see the evidence, no matter how graphic.
"The public has a right to know what the state is trying to prove," Griffen said.
Metro on 07/19/2017