Prosecutors have dismissed a charge of child pornography possession against a Vineland School District teacher whose trial ended in a hung jury earlier this year.
A prosecutor said there was insufficient evidence to continue with another trial of Margarito Madueno after a jury hung 9-3 for not guilty in May. No additional evidence surfaced in the case between the mistrial and Monday’s dismissal of the charge, Deputy District Attorney Cole Sherman said.
Madueno was in possession of a SD chip that contained child porn. His attorney argued at trial that Madueno had found the card and, not knowing what was on it, picked it up to use later.
An FBI search of Madueno’s computers and other electronic devices did not turn up additional child porn, attorney Mark Anthony Raimondo said.
“The FBI report comes back and it’s absolutely negative,” Raimondo said Tuesday. “Not only was that (chip) never in any of his devices, no files from any of his devices were on the chip.”
He said prosecutors tried to get Madueno to enter a plea to a lesser charge after the mistrial, but he refused.
“He said, ‘Mark, I didn’t do anything wrong,'” Raimondo said.
Upon the charge being dismissed, Madueno “cried like a baby and hugged me,” Raimondo said.
Madueno, 33 at the time of his arrest in October, was a teacher at the Vineland School District. Raimondo said he expects he will remain employed with the district, which he said was “100 percent behind (Madueno)” throughout his legal ordeal.
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