State v. Benjamin W. Mercer
Wisconsin Court of Appeals
782 N.W.2d 125 (2010)
- Written by Sharon Feldman, JD
Facts
A Wisconsin city (the city) installed monitoring software on each of its employees’ computers. The software alerted the city whenever an employee input an offensive or inappropriate word. The alerts indicated that Benjamin Mercer (defendant) was surfing the Internet for pornography. The city and the police reviewed Mercer’s computer use and discovered that Mercer had performed numerous searches for the words “preteen,” “preteen hardcore,” and “Lolita” and visited websites containing stories and images of children engaged in sexual activity. Mercer was charged with possession of child pornography. At trial, the monitoring software’s cofounder explained the log entries for Mercer’s computer use, and a forensic expert described the steps Mercer took to delete his Internet history and cache, the folder on Mercer’s hard drive in which copies of web pages Mercer had viewed were automatically downloaded and stored. Mercer was convicted and argued on appeal that no child pornography was found on his computer’s hard drive, this was a “pure view” case, and therefore there was insufficient evidence for the jury to find knowing possession.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Brown, C.J.)
What to do next…
Here's why 832,000 law students have relied on our case briefs:
- Written by law professors and practitioners, not other law students. 46,500 briefs, keyed to 994 casebooks. Top-notch customer support.
- The right amount of information, includes the facts, issues, rule of law, holding and reasoning, and any concurrences and dissents.
- Access in your classes, works on your mobile and tablet. Massive library of related video lessons and high quality multiple-choice questions.
- Easy to use, uniform format for every case brief. Written in plain English, not in legalese. Our briefs summarize and simplify; they don’t just repeat the court’s language.
