Commonwealth v. Rollins
Annotate this CaseAfter a jury trial, Defendant was found guilty of six counts of possessing child pornography. Each count was premised on one or two distinct photographs culled at the same time from a single cache on Defendant’s computer. Defendant appealed, arguing that his convictions were duplicative. The Supreme Judicial Court vacated the convictions and remanded for a new trial, holding (1) where offending photographs come from a single cache and the defendant is charged with possessing them at the same point in time, the proper unit of prosecution for the possession of child pornography is only a single unit of prosecution; and (2) accordingly, the entry of six separate convictions and sentences constituted multiple punishments for the same offense in violation of the guaranty against double jeopardy.
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