Unless you are police or a prosecutor handling evidence. Then you can look at all the child porn you want.
He also was not allowed to share the evidence with anyone in his office: no interns, paralegals, assistants .. only people who were directly involved in the prosecution.
I think this might also be why Microsoft seemed to only have one individual looking for so much of this content. He might have been given specific clearance with Microsoft/the justice department (the guy that was in an article a few weeks back for suffering from PTSD from that job).
While I can understand this at one level, at another it disturbs me that a lawyer hired (in some manner) for the defence would refuse to look at evidence to determine whether it met the definition of "illegality" in order to present an effective defense for the client.
Without doing so, the lawyer had no way of knowing what the images consisted of - were they merely going by what the prosecutor told them? Isn't that some kind of abdication of responsibility to a proper legal defence? Could the defendant get a new trial because of this?
If this was your trial, and you knew you were innocent, would you want to hear this from your defense lawyer? Or would you rather hope that the porn star in the images showed up at your trial to absolve you (which recently happened to some poor bastard)?
* Not saying I actually want that to happen, but just pointing out that "strict liability" logic breaks down real quick.
I can guarantee you, it isn't.