A Sitka man has been indicted on 10 counts of possession of child pornography.

A Sitka grand jury last week (11-10-16) indicted 41-year old William Roy Hammock for allegedly possessing a computer floppy disc containing at least 10 images of underage individuals engaged in sexual activity.

Sitka police discovered the disc in Hammock’s home in December of 2012 while executing a search warrant related to a drug investigation. The disc was one of five discs allegedly containing illegal images, and Hammock was indicted later that year on initial charges of possession of child porn.

However, legal counsel for Hammock successfully argued that four of the five discs were mishandled by police during evidence-gathering — namely, the read/write tabs on the discs were not switched to “read only” when the files were logged by detectives, creating doubts about when the defendant may have last accessed them — if ever.

The read/write tab on the fifth disc, however, was set to “read only” during evidence gathering, and the ten images contained on it are the basis for the grand jury’s re-indictment of Hammock last week.

Hammock is being held at the Lemon Creek Correctional Center in Juneau, pending $150,000 bail. His trial is set for January 9 in Sitka.

In other court news:

Sitka Superior Court in October sentenced 26-year old Carlos Ernesto Macias to serve 5 years in prison for Sexual Abuse of a Minor in the 2nd Degree. Macias was on probation for 5 counts of Assault at the time of his conviction. Probation was revoked, and he’ll serve out his penalties concurrently.

A second Sitka man, 46-year old Virgil Leal, is also headed to prison for one year. Leal was sentenced in Sitka Superior court for Misconduct Involving a Controlled Substance in the 3rd degree.

According to court records, Postal Inspectors intercepted a parcel addressed to Leal’s wife in October of last year. The parcel was heavily taped and had a phony return address. Inspectors subjected the parcel to a sniff by a drug dog, who indicated the presence of drugs.

Inspectors returned the parcel to the mail stream, where it was delivered to Leal’s home, and he was subsequently arrested by Sitka police. The package was found to contain about an ounce of methamphetamine, with a street value of over $5,000.

This was Leal’s first felony conviction.