VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — After about 40 minutes of deliberation, a judge found Philip Bay guilty Thursday on 20 counts of possessing child sex abuse material.
The case comes more than a decade after he was convicted of plotting to bomb Landstown High School.
Bay’s attorney, Eric Korslund, told 10 On Your Side the verdict for this case violates his client’s probation from his former conviction.
“He is exposed to an enormous penitentiary sentence that is hanging over his head, so to speak,” Korslund said. “And the court has the authority to reimpose that sentence because of this conviction.”
On the last day of the trial, the prosecution and the defense laid out their closing arguments.
From the initial investigation, 120,000 images were pulled from a cloud account connected to Bay’s phone number.
But this case focused on 33 of those images that depicted child sex abuse.
In the prosecution’s argument, they pointed out that nine pictures from Bay’s phone matched some of the total images pulled from the cloud.
But Korslund said that doesn’t prove their case.
“The images, again, on the cloud that were the subject of this trial were not found on any of his devices,” Korslund said. “So I think it left open that argument that he doesn’t know this stuff was on the cloud.”
In its argument, the Commonwealth also said of all of the media from the cloud, some selfies of Bay and the illegal ones were either uploaded on the same day or in close proximity to the dates in October 2022.
“It made things challenging for us, no question about it,” Korslund said in response. “I can’t run away from that. That was a difficult hurdle for us to overcome. But it still left open the possibility, and I think realistic possibility that Mr. Bay did not know these images were on the cloud.”
He tried to argue his client’s case from many different angles.
“There’s a myriad of possibilities and things we explored because the phone was in somebody else’s name,” Korslund said. “Somebody else had a plan. The images were uploaded from the same type of phone, but they couldn’t say it was his phone. The deleted images couldn’t be found on that phone.”
He was visibly frustrated in court when it came to the recovered images that were previously deleted from Bay’s phone.
He questioned tech experts on the stand, asking why not all of the images from the cloud were recovered from the phone.
“Deleted images can be overridden by the phone, but I think law enforcement has the capability of getting deleted images,” Korslund said.
On the first day of the trial Wednesday, a Virginia Beach detective took the stand and said that starting in 2022, investigators were tipped off by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
The company that manages Verizon cloud accounts alerted the non-profit about a file with data associated with child sex abuse material. A cloud account is a part of the internet in which images can be accessed remotely.
The investigator said that cloud account was connected to Philip Bay’s phone number.
A search warrant was executed, and around 12 digital devices were seized from Bay’s home where he lived with his mother. A forensic specialist on the stand said she recovered 15 images of child sexual abuse and 151 child exploitative images on Bay’s phone that had been deleted.
That included the title of a pdf file that read, “petite teen porn videos.”
The defense said because three other people — Bay’s mom, her ex-boyfriend and his son — were on the overarching Verizon account, there’s no way to prove Bay committed the crime.
Bay’s mom’s ex-boyfriend took the stand and confirmed that it was a shared phone plan, but said he had no access to Bay’s account.
As the court proceedings wrapped up, a surprising witness took the stand — Bay’s former cellmate.
He testified Bay confessed that he moved images of child sexual abuse from a laptop to his phone.
In the defense’s cross examination, the inmate said he made no deal with the prosecution, but admitted that he hoped the cooperation helps with his own upcoming sentencing.
The prosecution sent a statement that read, “The prosecution team is very pleased with the guilty verdict. These were very serious charges and children are among society’s most vulnerable victims. Most importantly, we are glad that this serves to not only protect the community from the defendant but as a stark warning to those who consider engaging in such behavior.”
Bay’s pre-sentencing is set for Nov. 26.