Embarrassment for CPS as it loses porn trial case

By politics.co.uk staff

Questions were being asked about the effectiveness of Labour's laws against extreme porn today, after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) lost a case against a former barrister.

Simon Walsh, a gay barrister and former mayoral aide, was charged with possessing images which could result in “serious injury” to a person’s anus, breasts or genitalia in his email, but was unanimously found not guilty by a jury at Kingston Crown Court.

The case raises questions about the original legislation and the behaviour of the CPS, as well as laws around electronic communication.

It also saw a CPS barrister flirt with controversy when they suggested people who went to sexual health clinics "engage in more risky practices".

Privacy campaigners were outraged the trial went ahead despite the police corrupting evidence by accessing the images on Walsh's computer.

If the jury had convicted, it would have implied people could be charged with possession for unopened email attachments they had not solicited.

But most of the controversy raged around the CPS decision to pursue prosecution against a man with images of a sex act, 'fisting', which is legal to perform and even features in the hugely successful erotica book 'Fifty Shades of Grey'.

The law was originally introduced following the brutal murder of Jane Longhurst, whose killer, Graham Coutts, admitted being addicted to violent internet pornography.

A petition of 50,000 people triggered a Home Office consultation and a law against extreme pornography, which also includes scenes in which someone's life is threatened or sex with an animal.