A New Haven man accused of looking at child pornography has pleaded not guilty.
Following a nine-month investigation, Gary Brerner, 43, was arrested last month after he pawned his laptop computer to National Pawn. According to police, an employee of the store noticed upwards of 6,000 questionable images on the computer’s hard drive, 304 of which are said to depict children engaging in sexual activities with adults and other children. The children were of toddler to teen ages.
In his defense of Brerner, attorney Richard Altschuler questioned why police waited so long to investigate the case and arrest Brerner, and questioned whether simply possessing pornographic images of children is enough to warrant arrest. “As vile as we might think these images are, a person still has the freedom of expression,” Altschuler told the press, noting that at least 20,000 images of child pornography are posted on the Internet every week.
“We have to protect children, but is it illegal for people to be looking at the images?” he continued. “If law enforcement officials want to stop the problem, they should go after the commercial websites and not the lowest levels of offenders.”
The case comes on the heels of last week’s verdict in the trial of Bay City man Terry Coleman, 43, who was found guilty of possessing short films that showed children having sex. Though Coleman’s attorney argued that merely viewing the films was not a crime, the jury ultimately decided that downloading the films constituted possession. Coleman is expected to appeal, and will not be sentenced until July 6.
