The Associated Press

CLEVELAND - For some, ex-prosecutor Dean Boland represents the right of every defendant to good legal representation.

But for others, his work as an expert witness on behalf of child-pornography defendants amounts to a descent into a "dirty, unhealthy world" that will tarnish his reputation.

Boland, 37, of Lakewood, is a former assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutor in Cleveland. More recently, he has testified as a defense expert in three child-pornography cases in northeast Ohio and one federal case in Tulsa, Okla.

Charges were thrown out in two of the Ohio cases. A judge in Tulsa is expected to rule Tuesday on the constitutionality of a federal law that requires a defendant to "knowingly" possess pornographic images of children in order to be convicted.

Boland has expertise in digital-imaging technology and the ways pornographers use it to enhance and distribute their wares via the Internet.

What started for Boland as a hobby evolved into a career specialty while working as an assistant to Prosecutor Bill Mason.

"Dean has gone to the dark side," Mason said. "If you start to creep into this dirty, unhealthy world, you're going to look like a part of that world.

Boland has teamed with criminal defense lawyers who are exploiting a provision of Ohio law that says to obtain a conviction, a prosecutor must prove that a digital portrait of suspected child pornography is, in fact, a picture of a child.

To meet that requirement, the image must be authenticated as a child and not an adult digitally enhanced to look like a child.

"It's easy to demonize me," Boland said, "but from my perspective, I'm not out there testifying about child porn. I'm testifying about the technology of digital imaging."