Accused child rapist allowed to view child pornography in prison

The law is a crazy, befuddling thing and never has this been more evident than in the case of Marc Gilbert who has been accused of sexually assaulting young boys and videotaping the abuse.

A law in the state of Washington allows defense attorneys to view all evidence in a child rape and pornography trial. So where’s the catch? As sickening as this is, Marc Gilbert is acting as his own lawyer and is thus allowed, by law, to view all the videos that have been submitted by the prosecutors as evidence.

When Gilbert was arrested back in 2007 there were over 100 dvds containing 28 plus hours of footage. What makes this even more horrible is that it is believed by prosecutors that some of this footage that Gilbert can watch without time restraints are of his own making and involve salacious acts performed by Gilbert on young boys he lured to his home.

Here is a video report filed by Tacoma news station KOMO-4:

According to an AP report Gilbert made a plea of guilty to producing child pornography in federal court back in 2009 as part of a deal. He received a sentence of 25 years but the deal depended on Gilbert also pleading guilty in state court. When a judge informed Gilbert that his sentence could be as long as life in prison he withdrew that initial guilty plea.

When Gilbert views the videos he has a private investigator present, he can be seen by guards and he’s forced to do so in a separate room so that no other inmates can witness the material.

As you can imagine the prosecutors and Sheriff from Pierce County where Gilbert is being tried are unhappy about this situation but are unwilling to act because of fear of a mistrial. The answer says prosecutor Mark Lindquist is to change the law.