By By JOHN EBY / Niles Daily Star
CASSOPOLIS – A jury deliberated less than an hour Tuesday evening before convicting an Edwardsburg man of five counts in a child pornography case.
John Edward McNeely, 50, faces at least 25 years in prison for molesting an 8-year-old girl when he's sentenced Friday, Jan. 11, at 8:30 a.m. before Circuit Judge Michael E. Dodge, who presided over his one-day trial.
While defense attorney James Miller, who called no witnesses, argued that Chief Assistant Prosecutor Jason Ronning relied too much on circumstantial "crutches to support a weak case," the jury of eight men and four women accepted that McNeely took a nude photograph of a 15-year-old Union High School student.
The Dowagiac teen and the Edwardsburg second grader, clutching a teddy bear, both took the witness stand to testify against McNeely, who allegedly turned the basement of his Ontwa Township home into an enticing "den of fun" hangout with games, a hot tub and chalk to draw on the walls.
Det. Sgt. Rebecca MacArthur of the Michigan State Police Grand Rapids computer crimes lab testified to finding 85 pornographic images among more than 1,200 of children in various poses on McNeely's digital camera, on a Gateway computer in an office adjacent to his bedroom, on a Hewlett-Packard computer in a spare bedroom and burned onto dozens of compact discs.
The 8-year-old girl said McNeely is no longer her friend since he put his hand inside her underwear and said, "Did that feel good?" She felt scared. He also kissed her on the lips. She identified herself in the photos, but doesn't remember them being taken in his bedroom. Sometimes they were alone together.
Ronning asked to let victim-witness coordinator Amanda Smego testify to impeach the girl's testimony, but Dodge sustained Miller's objection as hearsay. The girl previously told the prosecutor's office McNeely pushed her on the bed and photographed her.
She told the court Dec. 4 that she doesn't miss him and is happy not to be seeing him anymore.
Ronning apologized to jurors for the "horrible, terrible evidence" with which they were confronted.
The first witness, Edwardsburg-Ontwa Township Police Chief Kenneth W. Wray, helped Officer Michael Hubbard execute the search warrant June 17.
Hubbard, with Edwardsburg police for three years of his 19-year career, said McNeely lived by himself and admitted kissing girls, but not inappropriately. Hubbard said as soon as police encountered inappropriate photos on the CDs, they stopped and turned over confiscated materials to the state police lab because he was not trained in data retrieval.
Wray described how the basement, "set up for recreation," contrasted with the upstairs. It had a pool table, foosball, a large-screen TV and walls covered with graffiti which appeared to have been written by children. Handwritten messages spilled over onto the support beams.
The 15-year-old's mother had been to McNeely's home "12 or 13" times for cleaning and painting and borrowed the basement for birthday parties.
With their Internet service working sporadically, her daughter liked to go there to use his computer or to soak in the hot tub with a female friend.
She found it impossible to keep the girl away from Cherry Lane – especially when the mother was tired from working third shift and "gave in." Sometimes she went without her mother's approval.
Her daughter, who knew McNeely since she was 11 as a friend of her mother's, visited one to three times a week because "he had a lot of fun stuff to do."
The teen said she never changed clothes there or slept there, and that he gave them strawberry smoothies and candy.
"I'm naked," she identified the photo of her apparently passed out on the covers of McNeely's bed. She doesn't remember such a photo being made. Initially, she didn't think it was her when police showed it to her.
She and her friend sometimes flashed each other in the hot tub, which led Miller to suggest that perhaps she helped herself to wine coolers from McNeely's refrigerator, passed out and someone other than the defendant snapped the photo.
Another girl who testified is the 11-year-old cousin of the 8-year-old girl. She heard McNeely say the 8-year-old girl was his favorite. She also noticed adult magazines in the computer room children frequented to download pages to color or playing such games as Build-a-Bear Workshop.
The mother of the 8-year-old girl, the oldest of her daughters, trusted McNeely. "We thought we were friends." The mother's trust shattered with a report of the 50-year-old man hiding under an inflatable boat with the 8-year-old girl. She called police.
When the people rested, Miller offered a motion for a directed acquittal verdict on three of the charges since Ronning introduced no evidence about who took the photographs or that McNeely specifically induced any of them.
"I accept that those photos are not appropriate," Miller said, but no sexual activity is depicted, while the law requires "specific listed acts," including intercourse and "erotic nudity," defined as a lascivious exhibition to arouse lewd emotions.
It's his home, his camera, his sheets and no one else lived there. The images had been transferred from his camera to his computers, Ronning added.
"The facts speak for themselves," Ronning stated in his closing argument.