A Sitka man has been indicted on 10 counts of possession of child pornography.
A Sitka grand jury on Nov. 10 indicted William Roy Hammock, 41, for allegedly possessing a computer disc containing at least 10 images of underage individuals engaged in sexual activity.
Sitka police discovered the disc in Hammock’s home in December 2012 while executing a search warrant related to a drug investigation.
The disc was one of five discs allegedly containing illegal images, and Hammock was indicted later that year on initial charges of possession of child porn.
However, legal counsel for Hammock successfully argued that four of the five discs were mishandled by police during evidence-gathering — namely, the read/write tabs on the discs were not switched to “read only” when the files were logged by detectives, creating doubts about when the defendant may have last accessed them — if ever.
The read/write tab on the fifth disc, however, was set to “read only” during evidence gathering, and the 10 images contained on it are the basis for the grand jury’s re-indictment of Hammock last week.
Hammock is being held at the Lemon Creek Correctional Center in Juneau, pending $150,000 bail.
His trial is set for Jan. 9 in Sitka.
In other court news:
Sitka Superior Court in October sentenced Carlos Ernesto Macias, 26, to serve five years in prison for second-degree sexual abuse of a minor. Macias was on probation for five counts of assault at the time of his conviction. Probation was revoked, and he’ll serve out his penalties concurrently.
Virgil Leal, 46, of Sitka is also headed to prison for one year. Leal was sentenced in Sitka Superior court for Misconduct Involving a Controlled Substance in the 3rd degree.
According to court records, postal inspectors intercepted a parcel addressed to Leal’s wife in October of last year. The parcel was heavily taped and had a phony return address.
Inspectors subjected the parcel to a sniff by a drug dog, who indicated the presence of drugs.
Inspectors returned the parcel to the mail stream, where it was delivered to Leal’s home, and he was subsequently arrested by Sitka police.
The package was found to contain about an ounce of methamphetamine, with a street value of more than 5,000.
This was Leal’s first felony conviction.
