Cached child pornography

Cached child pornography is child pornography that is stored in a web cache. In the Romm case, the defendant admitted to having downloaded child porn and deleted it five minutes later. Investigators were able to use forensic tools to recover 40 images deleted from his internet cache and two images deleted from another part of his hard drive, and the 9th Circuit upheld his conviction:

Romm exercised control over the cached images while they were contemporaneously saved to his cache and displayed on his screen. At that moment, as the expert testimony here established, Romm could print the images, enlarge them, copy them, or email them to others. No doubt, images could be saved to the cache when a defendant accidentally views the images, as through the occurrence of a "pop-up," for instance. But that is not the case here.

By his own admission to ICE, Romm repeatedly sought out child pornography over the internet. When he found images he "liked," he would "view them, save them to his computer, look at them for about five minutes [ ] and then delete them." Either while viewing the images or shortly thereafter, Romm twice masturbated. He described his activities as the "saving" and "downloading" of the images. While the images were displayed on screen and simultaneously stored to his cache, Romm could print them, email them, or save them as copies elsewhere. Romm could destroy the copy of the images that his browser stored to his cache. And according to detective Luckie, Romm did just that, either manually, or by instructing his browser to do so. Forensic evidence showed that Romm had enlarged several thumbnail images for better viewing. In short, given the indicia that Romm exercised control over the images in his cache, there was sufficient evidence for the jury to find that Romm committed the act of knowing possession.