Marsh v. Colorado
Annotate this CaseA jury convicted petitioner Anthony Edwin Marsh of sexually assaulting three of his granddaughters and possessing more than twenty images depicting child pornography. Marsh appealed, and the court of appeals affirmed his conviction. The Colorado Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider whether the presence of temporary internet cache files stored on a person’s hard drive can constitute evidence of “knowing possession” as used in Colorado’s child pornography statute, section 18-6-403, C.R.S. (2016). First, the Court held that when a computer user seeks out and views child pornography on the internet, he possesses the images he views. The evidence presented at trial established that Marsh’s cache contained images that a computer user had previously viewed on the web browser. The Court therefore concluded that the internet cache images qualified as relevant evidence that Marsh had previously viewed, and thus possessed, those images. Even if the trial court improperly admitted the forensic interviewers’ testimony as lay opinion, the Supreme Court concluded that error was harmless. Therefore, the Court affirmed the court of appeals’ judgment in its entirety.
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