Sealed records requested in child porn case
Garrett Warfield
A Maryville man accused of possessing scores of explicit electronic images of children, and children and adults together, engaging in a variety of sexual acts appeared in court for the first time Tuesday morning.
Shackled hand and foot and dressed in jail orange T-shirt, pants and sandals, Garrett Warfield, 23, along with two other prisoners with scheduled “law day” appearances, was led by a bailiff into the main second-floor courtroom of the Nodaway County Courthouse.
When his case was called shortly before 9:30 a.m., Warfield took his seat at the defense table beside his attorney, Maryville-based Public Defender James Rynard, with associate Circuit Judge Douglas Thomson presiding.
As often happens at an initial arraignment, Rynard entered a not-guilty plea on his client’s behalf, and Thomson continued the case until 10 a.m. Wednesday, July 15.
However, Rynard then took the unusual step of requesting that most or all of the court records pertaining to the case be sealed.
The defense counsel cited newspaper stories, both print and online, that appeared just prior to Warfield’s court appearance. Both reports relied heavily on a probable cause statement filed May 29 in Nodaway County Circuit Court by Detective Sgt. Katherine Smith, a member of the Platte County Sheriff’s Office and the Western Missouri Cyber Crimes Task Force.
In her statement, Smith provides detailed allegations about the nature and content of seized electronic files obtained during a warranted search of Warfield’s Aurora Avenue residence in Maryville on March 10.
According to the probable cause document, which is designed to convince a judge that sufficient evidence exists to show that a crime has likely been committed, thumb drives found during the search contained at more than 100 images of what investigators believe to be child pornography.
Also seized during the search, Smith alleged, were 10 videos showing “boys as young as age 4 engaged in sexual acts with adult males.”
Rynard told the judge that continued media reports based on detailed examination of court documents related to Warfield’s alleged crimes could prove prejudicial to his client and perhaps endanger the anonymity of the alleged victims appearing in the videos and photographs.
“We don’t need a lot of reporting on this,” Rynard said.
In addition to requesting that case documents be fully or partly sealed, Rynard also asked Thomson to issued a gag order that would bar law enforcement officers from talking about the case to reporters.
Thomson answered by saying he would consider Rynard’s requests only if they were made in the form of a written motion with Prosecuting Attorney Robert Rice given time to respond in like manner, possibly later this week.
Warfield, until recently a student at Northwest Missouri State University, was arrested Friday by a Nodaway County Sheriff’s deputy after Rice on June 3 filed five felony charges against the defendant accusing him of possession of child pornography.
The charges stem from a Western Missouri Cyber Crimes Task Force investigation that began in late January after Smith received Microsoft-generated CyberTipline reports from the Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Warfield was being held in the Nodaway County jail in lieu of $100,000 bond. If ultimately convicted, he could serve a term of between five and 15 years in state prison on each of the five counts.
The court case number is 15ND-CR00185.
