A Stroud man facing two felony counts dealing with child pornography has pleaded not guilty and a jury trial has been scheduled.
John Mack Byrd., Jr., 43, was formally charged July 29 in Lincoln County District Court with possession of child pornography and using access to computers to violate Oklahoma State statutes.
Special Judge Emily Mueller originally scheduled Byrd’s preliminary hearing for 1:30 p.m. March 30.
Judge Mueller rescheduled it for 1:30 p.m. April 14.
At his arraignment on June 20 before District Judge Traci Soderstrom, Bryd pleaded not guilty. The judge scheduled his trial for Oct. 16, set him for the jury trial call docket on Oct. 13 and the felony disposition docket on Sep. 26.
Byrd acknowledged he knows it’s an 85 percent crime. All motions are to be filed by Aug. 8, the judge ordered.
Byrd was arrested July 26, 2022 by agents with the OSBI. The Stroud Police Department and Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office reportedly assisted with the investigation.
The first felony accuses Byrd of possessing child pornography, a felony, on about March 4, 2022 in Lincoln County by possessing a cellular phone with images consisting of child pornography.
In Count 2 against Byrd, he is charged with communicating with and retrieving data from computer systems or computer networks, known as Mega and Dropbox for the purpose of such access to retrieve, obtain and store images consisting of child pornography.
In a probable cause affidavit, it states on July 1, 2021OSBI Special Agent Rachell Savory was assigned an Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) investigation that was initiated by Dropbox and reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
A cyber tip indicated that Dropbox reported user with screen/user name John Byrd registered an account email address that traced to Byrd and uploaded one familiar child pornography file to his account on around June 10, 2021.
The affidavit states that Savory reviewed a NCMEC cyber tipline report and the file that Dropbox provided.
The file reportedly contained pornographic images, the agent stated in the affidavit.
According to the affidavit, the Dropbox account was at an IP address that was allocated to Windstream Services, LLC. It was determined the account subscriber was John M. Byrd with a Stroud Street address in Lincoln County.
A further utility inquiry verified the utilities were registered to Byrd and an inquiry of vehicles registered to Byrd identified one vehicle registered to him at that Stroud street address.
Savory reported that on March 4, 2022 she interviewed Byrd at his residence in Stroud. She stated he waived his Miranda Rights and admitted to the agent owning the email address she had earlier identified as belonging to him.
The affidavit also stated he admitted accessing child pornography while he used methamphetamine and that he accessed the internet and pornography sites from an Android cellular phone.
Savory said an on-site preview of Byrd’s cell phone didn’t readily locate the child pornography on the devices but that the preview of Byrd’s cell phone indicated he recently searched for and viewed pornography with applications known by investigators to be commonly associated with the download and share of child pornography.
The agent, on July 26, 2022 reviewed the forensic examination results of Byrd’s cell phone. She states in the affidavit that installed applications included Meg and Dropbox.
She reported at least 26 files of suspected child pornography were located on his cell phone.