The Supreme Court has upheld the decision to hold a St George’s man convicted of a string of child pornography charges in custody until he can be sentenced.

Cahlii Smith, 30, was found guilty this month of blackmail, making child pornography, distributing child pornography and accessing child pornography.

The most serious of the offences carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.

Smith was on bail until the completion of his trial but he was remanded into custody on July 4 when the guilty verdicts were delivered.

Smith had urged the court in a previous appearance to release him on bail until he can be sentenced, arguing that bail was a right.

However, Puisne Judge Juan Wolffe said that such an interpretation would allow those convicted of the most heinous crimes to be released while they awaited sentencing.

“The fact that the defendant has been convicted of serious imprisonable offences involving children and is facing a lengthy immediate custodial sentence heightens the risk that he will fail to surrender to custody, interfere with witnesses or obstruct the course of justice [in anticipation of a retrial],” Mr Justice Wolffe wrote in his judgment.

“The bottom line is that prior to conviction there is much less motivation on an accused person to not surrender to custody or to commit further offences while on bail or to interfere with witnesses or to obstruct the course of justice.

“Therefore, probably because of the presumption of innocence and the rather heavy burden on the prosecution to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, that substantial grounds for believing that an accused person will breach any conditions of bail may not be readily present prior to conviction.

“However, upon conviction the person is no longer an ‘accused’ person who is cloaked with innocence. Immediately upon the pronouncement of guilt by the jury foreperson, he/she becomes a ‘convicted’ person who has had their day in court by way of a fully ventilated trial in which prosecution witnesses were challenged by defence but still came up to proof.”

Mr Wolffe noted that the jury in the case had delivered unanimous guilty verdicts on five of the seven counts against Smith and a majority verdict on the remaining two counts.

“This speaks to the solid strength of the prosecution’s case,” he said. “Additionally, and probably most importantly, the very real possibility of being imprisoned for a significant period of time hovering over a person’s head also changes the landscape from when the person was simply accused of committing a crime.

“So whereas prior to conviction there may not have been the presence of substantial grounds for believing an accused person will not comply with bail, even where the accused person had fully complied with bail prior to conviction, such substantial grounds are brought to the fore after there is a conviction and when there is a likelihood of an immediate custodial sentence being imposed.

“The longer the sentence, the less likely an accused person will surrender to it.

Mr Wolffe dismissed the application for bail pending sentence.

During his trial, the Supreme Court heard from two victims, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, who said they knew Smith through a shared passion for music.

Both victims said they had been contacted by someone on Facebook who claimed to be a hacker that had accessed intimate images of them from their phones.

They told the court the purported hacker then demanded that they produce pornographic images and videos or he would release the materials he had on social media.

The first victim said she was contacted by the blackmailer in December 2013, while the second victim said she was contacted in the spring of 2015.

At the time, both of the girls were under the age of 16.

They each told the court that they succumbed to the blackmailer’s demands but after several months they each cut off communications with him, only to have the materials released on social media.

Pornographic images and videos of both girls were later found on a computer linked to Smith.

Smith denied any involvement in the scheme, telling the court that he did not have access to the laptop since 2011 and that he used it after that only to charge his iPod.

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