Posted November 10, 2003.

Documents Librarian Pleads Not Guilty to Child-Porn Charges

A former documents librarian at the University of Utah’s Marriott Library in Salt Lake City pled not guilty November 4 to having viewed child pornography on a university library computer. Ralph E. Kranz was charged with 10 counts of second-degree felony exploitation of a minor because there were allegedly 10 different children in the image files in the cache folder of Kranz’s library computer. Utah law specifies a felony count for each minor depicted in sexually explicit images found in a suspect’s possession.

Library Director Sarah Michalak notified police after computer technicians working to remove a virus from the library network on September 8 inadvertently discovered the files, which appeared to have been accessed over an 18-minute time span four days earlier.

According to court documents, Kranz, 57, waived his right to avoid self-incrimination so he could tell university Detective Mike McPharlin that he had been investigating “how easy it is to find child pornography on the Internet,” according to the November 5 Salt Lake City Tribune. Two days earlier, the campus Daily Utah Chronicle reported that Utah Assistant Attorney General Paul Amann dismissed as “an excuse commonly used” Kranz’s assertion that “he had not entered any sites,” as noted in McPharlin’s report. “Ralph would know you don’t go into this kind of information casually,” Eccles Health Sciences Library Director Wayne Peay told the Chronicle. He added that before conducting such research, “you would make sure you were advising your supervisor.”

University of Utah spokesperson Coralie Alder confirmed that Kranz, a 21-year employee, is no longer on staff there.

Posted November 10, 2003.