Hacked Evidence Thrown Out In Ex-Judge's Child Porn Case

Most of the key evidence in the child porn case against former Orange County Judge Ronald Kline was thrown out June 17, after a federal judge ruled it was obtained illegally by a Canadian computer hacker who worked for police investigators. That wiped out most of the case which provoked Kline to withdraw his re-election bid last November.

U.S. District Judge Consuelo Marshall ruled that the diary entries and some 1,500 images downloaded from Kline's home computer was inadmissible on Fourth Amendment grounds, all but killing six of seven charges against the former judge. She set a September 15 hearing date on the seventh charge and the evidence related to that charge, according to the Orange County Register.

Bradley Willman, a British Columbian who had hacked into Kline's computer and gotten the images, told the Register Marshall's ruling disappointed him. "If people are doing something wrong, they are doing something wrong," he told the paper. "It doesn't matter how you get to them."

Oh, yes it does, Marshall's ruling said. The ruling noted Willman identified himself as a law enforcement agent when he was deposed in the Kline case, and that law enforcement offered him immunity from arrest.

The remaining charge against Kline involves digital images of naked boys taken from his work computer. Kline's attorney argued that that evidence should be thrown out because it was taken based on evidence provided by Willman, the Register said.