A man found guilty yesterday of possession of obscene matter will likely appeal his conviction, his attorney said late yesterday.

A jury found Samuel Allen McCormick, 36, formerly of Florala, guilty Thursday on one count. The trial began Monday.

McCormick is a former Florala police officer and a former Walton County deputy, his attorney, Riley Powell of the Powell Law Firm, said.

McCormick was charged in 2007 when his girlfriend, also a former Florala police officer, reported to law enforcement she had found computer discs containing sexually explicit images of naked children. She turned the disks over to then-Florala Police Chief Bruce Maddox, whose department conducted the subsequent investigation.

Chief Assistant District Attorney Grace Jeter prosecuted the case.

During the trial, the jury heard testimony that the disks, which had

been found among McCormick’s belongings, contained his handwriting. The state also presented a video found on one of the disks of a sexually aroused man they said was McCormick as evidence that he was aware of the contents of the disk. Two witnesses, McCormick’s ex-wife and ex-girlfriend, said the man was McCormick. A third witness, his current girlfriend, said it was not, Powell said.

McCormick testified he was unaware that there were images of child pornography on the disks.

Powell said to be guilty of possession of obscene matter, the law states, one must have knowledge of the possession. (Code of Alabama, 13-A-12-192 (B) ).

Powell said his client maintained that the disks contained material seized while he was on active duty in Iraq, and he did not know the images were there.

McCormick first joined the military in 1993 and was active until about 2000. He then was a member of the National Guard unit based in Chipley, Fla., with whom he was deployed in 2003 and in 2009.

In was in the first deployment, Powell said, that the images came into McCormick’s possession. He said the company was guarding the presidential palace in Baghdad when a large group of Iraqi teens set up milk crates full of CDs on the sidewalk, with a computer for previewing the disks, and began selling pornography. Those guarding the palace were ordered to seize the disks and computer because the teens were perceived as a security threat.

Powell said the soldiers took the material back to the barracks, where military police looked at the CDs, determined they had more important issues with which to deal, and told the soldiers to get rid of the disks.

The computer, Powell said, included a web cam, and the soldiers set it up to communicate with their families. When the computer crashed, McCormick shipped it home to his ex-wife, who had it repaired by someone in DeFuniak Springs. The repairman backed up all of the data before repairing the computer and shipping it back to Iraq.

McCormick maintains that it was those back-up disks on which the images were found, Powell said. The computer repair story was corroborated in court, he said.

The back-up disks, the attorney said, were in a trunk with other military memorabilia, including McCormick’s Army helmet. The disks also included Arabic text, Powell said.

Both Jeter and Powell commended the jury for their four days of work in a difficult case.

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“I know that it was difficult for the jury to sit through this case, but they paid close attention to all of the evidence and worked very hard to reach their verdict,” Jeter said.

“These pictures are the stuff that nightmares are made of,” she said. “Child pornography is child abuse, documented and preserved for eternity.”

Powell said the jury had “a very hard job,” and that he appreciated their work.

“This was a very intelligent jury,” he said. “They came back and asked a number of very good questions.”

Judge Ashley McKathan scheduled sentencing for April 16. Possession of obscene matter is a Class C felony and carries a

sentence of one to 10 years’ imprisonment. Jeter said she will ask for the maximum sentence and imprisonment.

Powell said he expects his client to appeal on one of several potential problems with the case.