Police Make New Allegations Against Ogden Shootout Suspect

A New Attempt to Demonize Defendant Matthew Stewart and Further Poison the Jury Pool?

We're greeted with a whole swarm of 1/4/12 Ogden Shootout stories this morning, as ALL prominent Northern Utah News Media coincidentally and simultanously report on the contents of a search warrant affidavit obtained from Ogden's 2nd District Court. It's almost as if all important Utah print and broadcast media outlets have each other on speed-dial, or it seems to us:

Utah Print Media:

• Warrant: Child porn, anti-government material found in Matthew Stewart's home - Deseret News
• Ogden shootout defendant now under suspicion for child pornography - Salt Lake Tribune
• Police: Child porn found on Stewart’s computer -Standard-Examiner

Utah Television Broadcasters:

• Police make new allegations against Ogden shootout suspect - ABC4 News
• Search warrants claim child porn found on accused cop-killer’s computer - Fox News 13
  
• Child porn, anti-government material found in Stewart's home - KSL5 News
• Search Warrants Reveal Stewart's Plans To Make Bombs - KUTV2 News

Shameless cynics as we are, we'll interpret this latest effort to demonize Defendant Matthew Stewart as yet another mendacious attempt on the part of Weber County prosecutors to again poison the potential Northern Utah Utah jury pool, a tactic which could all but guarantee that a fair trial in Weber County, or any other venue in Utah will become a practical impossibility.

Strange, innit, that prosecutors have no apparent hesitation to selectively release this single inflammatory search warrant affidavit, while the "probable cause" affidavit[s] and other documents supporting the original search warrant continue to remain out of public view and "safely" under the prosecution's lock and key?

As we earlier reported, Weber County Attorney Dee Smith is running for Utah State Attorney General this year. Seems like another interesting coincidence, dunnit? Did Smith's campaign "dump" this "single" search warrant affidavit into a publicly available court file and then "tip" the media about it? And what ever happened to the prosecution's "request" for a gag order? Was that just some kind of smoke screen?

In other related news, Fox13 News ran a related story yesterday, reporting that the Matthew Stewart Support Website has finally received state approval to resume the solicitation and ollection of donations:

• Website back up to raise money for accused Ogden police shooter

Yep we double checked. There's that PayPal Donation Button again:

• Help Matthew Stewart Donations Page

That's it for now WCF Crime Beat wonks.

So many questions and so few answers...

So who'll be the first to throw in their own 2¢?