Jury convicts Greenock man of indecent images charges

Robert Leith, 66, was charged with being in possession of 6,854 photos and videos between February 1999 and July 2021.

He was also found guilty of a separate charge of taking or permitting to be taken, or making, indecent photographs during this period.

Following the closure of the Crown case, Leith tendered a plea of guilty to a third charge of being in possession of extreme pornography ‘depicting in an explicit and realistic way' bestiality.

This plea had been offered prior to the jury trial but was not accepted by the Crown at the time.

READ MORE: Greenock man stands trial on indecent images charges

The trial heard that more than 10,000 examples of extreme pornography were found across several devices which had been seized at Leith’s home in July 2021.

In her closing speech to jurors, fiscal depute Kirstin Brierley noted that Leith had admitted ownership of the devices seized by police, and that emails, usernames and credit card information relating to him had been found on these.

Ms Brierley said the ‘primary method’ of ‘making’ images in the case was downloading, and highlighted that the user of the devices had taken ‘positive action’ to bookmark URLs containing phrases indicative of child sexual exploitation in web browsers.

Ms Brierley told the jury: “I would suggest that if you accept it was the accused who made these images then he would have, of course, known they existed.

“I would suggest to you that he would have known what was kept on his own devices.

“Robert Leith would have you believe that despite that evidence of 6,854 images spread across six devices, he had no knowledge of these images.

“This is despite expert evidence to the contrary.”

Defending Leith, advocate Andrew Crosbie acknowledged that ‘horrible’ and ‘distasteful’ things had been found on the devices recovered from Leith’s property, but maintained that his client had no knowledge of any child abuse material being present on the devices.

He also noted that of the total number of images discovered on the computers and hard drives, only one point six per cent were accessible. 

He said: “It’s not enough for the Crown to prove that they were there - it has to be proven that Robert Leith knew they were there.

“If you don’t know something is there, you cannot have any control over it.”

READ MORE: Greenock man admits possession of bestiality images

Giving evidence before jurors last week, Leith explained that he could spend eight to ten hours a day online and that he often ‘pirated’ movies and TV shows from the Internet.

In his closing remarks, Mr Crosbie said: “There are people out there trying to get you to download things without meaning to.

“There are plenty people out there with bad intentions.

“You’re effectively downloading things on trust from people you cannot trust – strangers.”

Over the course of the trial, the jury - of eight men and six women - heard evidence from several witnesses, including police experts who analysed the seized devices.

They took less than two hours to convict Leith of both indecent images charges.

Sheriff Sheena Fraser deferred sentence – for all three offences - until June 10 to allow for the preparation of social work reports and a restriction of liberty order assessment.

Leith’s bail has been continued in the meantime.