Re: Actual case aside
"that Doe had shown her hundreds of images of child pornography on the encrypted external hard drives."So unless she's making it up and the other evidence doesn't amount to damning
Not necessarily her that is making things up. The piggie-wiggies aren't exaclty bastions of innocence and law-abidence now are they? Enough case history exists to cast a lot of doubt of what the police do or say.
Consider.. We're expected to believe that this person has such a relationship with his sister that he feels he can show her "hundreds of CP images. It's also mentioned that there are photos of his nieces in underwear (which can be quite innocent) - it's presumable that these are the sister's own children. If they are her children, and the same uncle who gets pictures of CP is also getting pictures of them in their underwear, well, there's something pretty messed up there. If not her children, then there's a good chance they're the kids of one of her siblings (though the guy could be married and they could be the wife's sibling's kids).
Given the sort of sentences that've been reported for CP possession in the us, if you were intelligent enough to encrypt all such things would you also be stupid enough to show anyone else such pictures, especially if that someone was the mother of some of the children who happen to be in your collection? I have some doubts about that, the math isn't quite right for me.