News

Scully makes case to drop charges

By Julie Manganis
Staff writer
Published: November 22, 2008

BEVERLY — A judge is mulling a request by former Beverly Public Library director Thomas Scully to throw out the child pornography charges that have been pending against him for more than three years.

Scully and his lawyer argued during a hearing yesterday that police withheld photographs and other evidence that the foster father of a teenage boy brought to them in 2005, and that investigators did a sloppy job of examining the hard drive of Scully's computer, failing to notice viruses on the drive.

All of that evidence, had it been shown to the grand jury that heard the case, might have led those jurors to conclude that Scully was not responsible for the pornography found on his computer.

Scully, 60, of Beverly, is facing seven counts of possessing child pornography and a count of disseminating obscene material to a minor, a 15-year-old boy he met at the library in 2003.

During a hearing in Lawrence Superior Court, prosecutor Michael Sheehan explained to Judge Richard Welch how Scully approached the teen after he was caught looking at sexually explicit Web sites.

Sheehan said that over the next two years, Scully engaged in what he termed "grooming" of the boy. Scully invited the teen to his home and allowed him to use his computer to view pornography, including some images of underage boys.

The boy's foster father became concerned and went to police after discovering that Scully, a man in his 50s at the time, had given the boy cell phones and cash and sent him a birthday card.

Defense lawyer Ronald Ranta said his client "provided a room in his home where (the boy) would be able to explore his sexuality in private."

It was the boy, Ranta and Scully suggest, who downloaded the seven images of child pornography found on Scully's computer.

To bolster their case, they point to the stack of photos the boy's foster father turned over to police, photos that were different from the ones on Scully's computer. That, they argued, suggests that the boy had downloaded child porn on his own computer at home, and that a jury could find that he might have done the same on Scully's computer.

In addition, they argue that computer "Trojan" viruses not detected by investigators in 2005 could have been responsible for taking control of Scully's computer and downloading the images.

Those viruses were discovered when a defense expert examined the hard drive earlier this year. He opined that the viruses could have been used by some hacker to access Scully's computer and put the photos there.

The supervisor of the district attorney's computer crimes unit, Robert Falanga, acknowledged that he did not find the viruses until this year, after re-examining a copy of the hard drive using newer technology than what was available in 2005.

While there were virus scanning software programs on the market in 2005, the specialized software that must be used to examine copies of a hard drive, as opposed to a typical anti-virus program, was not widely available.

And Falanga testified that even though Trojan viruses were on the hard drive, there is no way to show whether they caused child porn to be downloaded.

Ranta suggested that someone who intentionally downloads child porn would likely have more than the seven images on his hard drive.

Welch said he wanted some time to review the motion and the prosecutor's response before making a ruling in the case.

Scully is due back in court on Dec. 11.