DA asks court to admit more evidence against New Castle man

Man yet to enter plea after authorities seized porn, drugs in 2006

By Pete Fowler
Post Independent Staff
Glenwood Springs, CO Colorado
April 11, 2008

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GLENWOOD SPRINGS — District Attorney Martin Beeson has appealed a judge’s ruling that threw out some evidence relating to one of Frank Alameno’s child pornography cases.

Ninth Judicial District Judge Denise Lynch’s March 28 ruling suppressed evidence regarding pornography in the garage of Alameno’s home and evidence surrounding 2.1 grams of methamphetamines allegedly found in Alameno’s bathroom medicine cabinet.

Beeson said Thursday that none of the charges would necessarily be dismissed, but the ruling could affect drug charges against Alameno and misdemeanor counts of cruelty to animals and obscenity.

“We think that the order of suppression is inaccurate,” Beeson said. “It’s not legally justified.”

Defense attorney Lawson Wills had sought to suppress all evidence obtained from Alameno’s home with two September 2006 search warrants. He argued that investigators provided insufficient probable cause in affidavits supporting the search warrants. The two attorneys argued over numerous legalities in court documents.
Regarding the drugs, Beeson said that a search warrant was supported by probable cause to search for child pornography, which could have been stored on a small flash drive or disk in the medicine cabinet. Law enforcement isn’t required to ignore evidence found in plain sight during the course of a search for other items, he said.
“This argument is disingenuine at best,” Lynch’s order says. “It’s a stretch of the imagination to think that reasonable people store these computer items in a medicine cabinet.”

Beeson said the evidence found in the garage should also be admissible since child pornography allegedly found on Alameno’s computer in a woodpile behind his house was not suppressed. The computer from the woodpile wasn’t suppressed because Alameno took the computer out of his office and hid it within five minutes, Beeson said, so Alameno could have hidden it anywhere within a 2.5 minute walk of the office, including in the garage.

Lynch’s 18-page order covers numerous other arguments and legal points.
Alameno lives south of New Castle and operated a Rifle taxidermy business. He was arrested Sept. 13, 2006, in Rifle after family members reported that he possessed
child pornography, methamphetamines and cocaine. They planned an intervention
but decided it was “too big for them” and contacted police, the order says.

Law enforcement said they found thousands of images including child pornography
and bestiality in Alameno’s home and on the computer hidden in a woodpile behind
his house. They said Internet chats describe Alameno giving pharmaceuticals to
children and broadcasting inappropriate photographs of them on the Internet while
they slept. But Wills argued the chats only described a fantasy. Alameno was
arrested again after a court hearing in March 2007 and accused of six more felonies
in a separate case with allegations he inappropriately touched girls aged 10 and 13
while riding ATVs at his property in the summer of 2006.

In all, Alameno faces about 45 charges between the two cases. Most are felony
possession of child pornography charges. The most serious are sexual exploitation
of a child and sexual assault on a child less than 15 years old.

He hasn’t entered a plea yet. It may take around three to six months to get the results
of the appeal. Wills declined to comment on the case.

Contact Pete Fowler: 384-9121pfowler@postindependent.com





Post Independent, Glenwood Springs Colorado CO