Sex, sins of omission and injustice made local news this week in two separate cases – one out of Ooltewah and one from South Pittsburg.
In South Pittsburg, a Baptist preacher had been falsely accused of downloading child pornography – even after the investigating officers knew that neither of two computers confiscated from his home contained child pornography and the TBI knew that neither computer had been “scrubbed.”
The evidence that arresting officers did not present to a Marion County grand jury – evidence which should and probably would have resulted in the case being no-billed – didn’t balance the incomplete accusations of authorities, so David Hoschar, the pastor of Kimball Baptist Church, a husband and father of two, was indicted. A year and a half later, in 2012, the criminal case against him was dismissed, but in 2013 Hoschar and his wife filed a civil lawsuit in federal court, seeking $1.1 million because he was maliciously prosecuted, falsely imprisoned and embarrassed.
The case began six years ago when a Winchester, Tenn., police detective monitoring the Internet for sexual predators noticed an IP address in South Pittsburg was downloading stills of child pornography. That officer subpoenaed records from the Internet service provider and traced the downloads to an IP address that belonged to an “Emily” at the pastor’s address. He and two other officers, including a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation officer, got a search warrant for David and Emily Hoschar’s home and found a desktop computer and a laptop, records show.
When they later presented the case to the grand jury, they never mentioned that someone else in the vicinity could have downloaded the porn because the Hoschars’ router was not protected. They never clarified that the second laptop wasn’t around during the search because the Hoschars’ daughter took it when she moved out in 2009. And they never shared that a TBI report ruled out either computer being scrubbed clean of pornography.