“Do you know the defendant?”
Dillinger shifts uneasily in the chair and looks over at the man sitting at the defense table.
“No. I don’t know him. I’ve never met him.”
Douglas “Buddy” Carver stares straight ahead from his spot at the defense table. There isn’t a trace of emotion on his sixty-year-old face. His thinning white hair has been combed to the side and held firmly in place by a sticky product of some kind, and he’s wearing a loud, red sport coat. Carver is a slumlord, one of the wealthiest landowners in northeast Tennessee. He’s also an extremely popular deacon at one of the largest Methodist churches in Johnson City and hosts a local television show called Bringing the Light that airs at five o’clock every Sunday afternoon. Most of the people in the gallery are supportive members of his church. They stared at me coldly when I walked into the courtroom.
“Would you please explain to the court how you became involved in this case, Mr. Dillinger?” I ask.
“I received notice that Mr. Carver had downloaded some images onto his computer.”
“You say you received notice. How were you notified?”
“By my computer.”
“Can you explain to the court how it worked?”
“I attached what’s known as a Trojan Horse virus to some pornographic material on an Internet Web site. The pornographic material depicted children. When the images were downloaded, the virus notified me. I was then able to get into the computer of whoever downloaded the images. From there, I was able to find out who was doing the downloading.”
“How many pornographic images of children were downloaded?”
“Twelve the day I found out about it, but when I got into the computer, there were about fifteen hundred more.”
“And what did you do, Mr. Dillinger?”
“I called Pedofind. It’s a nonprofit organization that tracks pedophiles in the United States and Canada. I gave them the information I had.”
“And after that?”
“All I know is that Mr. Carver wound up getting arrested, and here I am today.”
Pedofind had contacted the Johnson City Police Department, and they, in turn, had followed up. They gathered enough information to get a search warrant, executed the warrant at Buddy Carver’s home a week later, seized his computer, and arrested him a couple of days after that.
“Did you have any contact regarding Mr. Carver with any law enforcement agency in Tennessee before you found these images on his computer?” I ask.
“No.”
“Did you have any contact with any law enforcement agency anywhere about Mr. Carver before you found these images?”
“No.”
“Thank you, Mr. Dillinger.”
Cut-and-dried, I think. Straightforward. Nothing to attack. But I know there’s never anything cut- and-dried in the field of criminal law. I also know I’m in front of a judge who is strangely sympathetic to sex offenders in general and pedophiles in particular. I suspect he and the defendant might have something in common.
Judge Green has been taking notes and listening intently to the testimony, his glasses perched precariously on his long, thin nose. Buddy Carver’s lawyer is a fifty-year-old named William Kay who brownnoses judges so blatantly that everyone calls him Fudge. He has filed a motion asking the judge to throw out all of our evidence (the pornographic images) because, he alleges, his client’s rights under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution have been violated. Specifically, Fudge is arguing that David Dillinger illegally searched Carver’s computer, thereby requiring the court to exclude the evidence he found and subsequently turned over to Pedofind.
Were David Dillinger a police officer, Kay’s argument would have legs. But Dillinger is a private citizen who took it upon himself to intervene in a situation that offended him personally. The guarantees under the Fourth Amendment don’t extend to searches conducted by private individuals-only to searches conducted by agents of the government. Fudge is arguing that because Dillinger contacted authorities as soon as he found the pornographic material and sought to have Carver prosecuted, he was acting as an agent of the government and was therefore required to obtain a warrant before searching the files of Carver’s computer. Fudge is wrong, but that doesn’t mean a thing.
“Cross, Mr. Kay?” Judge Green asks, and Kay gets up. He’s short and pudgy. His brown hair is matted and looks as though he just got out of bed.
“Mr. Dillinger,” Kay says as he waddles around the table toward the lectern, “why did you attach this virus to this particular kind of material?”
“Because it offends me.”
“How did you know where to find it?”
“Excuse me?”
I’m watching Dillinger intently. He sits on his hands and his face flushes. He’s already becoming flustered, so I stand.
“Objection, relevance,” I say. “How Mr. Dillinger originally found the material has nothing to do with whether Mr. Carver downloaded it to his computer.”
“Overruled,” Judge Green snarls. “Sit down, Mr. Dillard.”
“Here’s the thing, Mr. Dillinger,” Kay says. “I wouldn’t know how to find child porn if I wanted to, and I’m guessing everyone else in this courtroom is the same way. I mean, you don’t just log on to Google and type in ‘child pornography,’ do you? That seems like a surefire way to get a visit from the feds. So how did you know where to find it so you could attach your virus to it?”
“It isn’t that difficult,” Dillinger says.
“Explain it to us.”
Dillinger looks at me for help, but the judge has already made his feelings known on the objection. Dillinger has inserted himself into this situation, and Judge Green and William Kay are making sure he has to live with the consequences.
“People find it through chat rooms, mostly,” Dillinger says reluctantly.
“And you have personal experience with this?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Are you some kind of pervert?”
I could stand and voice the objection of badgering or argumentative, but I don’t want Dillinger to come across as being spineless. I decide to let him handle it himself. His eyes tighten, and he leans forward.
“I believe your client is the pervert in this room,” he says angrily. Attaboy. Don’t let him intimidate you.
Kay looks immediately to the judge. “Will the court instruct the witness to answer the question, please?”
“Answer the question,” Green says curtly.
“I don’t remember the question,” Dillinger snaps.
“The question is why,” Kay says, starting to re-frame the query. “Why do you know how to locate child pornography on the Internet?”
Dillinger pauses, and I feel for him. I’ve asked him the same question, of course, during our preparation for the hearing. It initially seemed as odd to me as it does to Kay, but once I heard the answer, I understood. Kay should have learned the answer himself before he asked such a dangerous question. The word why can be a powder keg in the courtroom.
“I know how to locate it because I was raped as a child by a man who showed me the same kind of smut that your client downloaded onto his computer.”
Dillinger’s tone is one of indignation and disgust. He lifts his chin and folds his arms, glaring at Kay, who is surprised but manages to recover quickly.
“So what you’re telling me is that your motivation in finding child pornography on the Internet and attaching this virus to it is anger, correct?” Kay says.
“I don’t know.”
