Mr Smith, of Blencathra, Ruette des Saumarez, Castel, denies two charges of sending video clips that were grossly offensive or of an obscene character via the telecommunications network.
They showed real-life murders, torture, suicides and fatal accidents as a ‘twisted form of entertainment’.
Opening the case for the prosecution, Crown Advocate Chris Dunford said the videos came with a health warning as they contained extreme violence and upsetting incidents.
It was a complicated and unusual case in that there were no live witnesses and the defendant would not be giving evidence.
The offences are said to have been committed in April 2019 when the defendant sent a total of 31 videos to a closed WhatsApp group called Failing Electricians. It had 32 members and there were eight recipients.
He was charged originally with four offences but two were being dismissed. The second remaining charge was a roll-up one which reflected the continuing nature of the offences.
Advocate Dunford said some were snuff videos – clips of actual homicide. None of the clips had been masked or pixelated in any way and they were horrendous to view, he said.
‘It’s hard to conceive of other videos that could be more offending,’ he said.
The international media would self-edit material before they sent it out to the public as lawyers would probably tell them that they would be committing an offence if they did not.
The line had been crossed in this case. It was the prosecution case that the defendant had wanted to create shock value by sending these videos.
If a video was received then somebody must have sent it and the reaction from the WhatsApp group was irrelevant.
The court heard that on 25 April 2019, police seized a phone belonging to someone who was referred to as Mr X in connection to another matter.
It was examined and things found on it led to the defendant’s Apple iPhone being seized that August, for which he gave them the passcode.
A digital examination report of its contents was made.
He gave no comment responses to questions in all three interviews.
Defending, Advocate Thomas Crawfourd said it was not disputed that the videos were of an offensive or obscene character and that his client had caused them to be received by other members of the group.
It was disputed though that his actions had met the legal and factual niceties which formed the base of the prosecution’s case.
It could not be said that they had compromised the integrity of the network when the material in question had come from there in the first place and it could have been doing the rounds for some time.
None of the videos had been shot by his client.
The consequences of WhatsApp messages were very different to that of other forms of transmissions.
Whenever an action was performed it was encrypted by the phone and, when sent, a message would be unreadable, indecipherable gibberish. Only the phone of the receiver could convert it into a readable form.
At the time of sending the messages, his client would not have had the knowledge or intention that they would cause offence to people or be of an obscene character.
There was no evidence that he looked at the videos before forwarding them on and no messages were attached.
The recipients had exchanged material of a similar nature but had not been investigated. As a result there was a lacuna of evidence.
Had the videos been stored for his client’s viewing. only he would not have been committing any offence regardless of what other people might think.
It was not agreed that the videos had not been staged. This had been a private situation and they had not been sent to the world at large.
Advocate Crawfourd said the prosecution had failed to prove its case beyond all reasonable doubt his client should be acquitted.
Judge Graeme McKerrell said he would re-convene the court at a later date to announce his decision.
