photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

The Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center is pictured in March of 2022. The center houses the Douglas County District Court and other county services.

Child pornography charges against a Lawrence man were dismissed on Wednesday due to insufficient evidence, but they could still be refiled, and prosecutors have requested a follow-up investigation.

The man, Caleb William Deines, 26, was charged with 10 counts of sexual exploitation of a child by possessing images of children under the age of 18 engaging in sexually explicit conduct, according to charging documents.

On Wednesday morning, Deines was scheduled for a preliminary hearing, at which the state would have presented evidence that a crime had been committed and that Deines may have committed the crime. However, the hearing was canceled, and Deputy District Attorney Joshua Seiden filed a motion to dismiss the case without prejudice, meaning the charges could still be refiled. The reason for dismissal listed in the motion was “insufficient evidence at this time — follow-up investigation requested.”

Deines was arrested in connection with the charges on April 8, 2022, and charging documents stated that the case stemmed from an incident on Feb. 15, 2021.

According to a police affidavit in support of Deines’ arrest, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children flagged child sexual abuse material that had been uploaded to an account Deines used on the file-sharing service Dropbox.

The affidavit also said that in an interview with police in 2021, Deines said he used the account to receive pornography that he purchased online. According to the affidavit, he told police that he’d receive many images at a time, and that when he received them, he wasn’t aware that some of them were child pornography. Deines also told police he lost access to his Dropbox account in April or May of 2020 and that he deleted Dropbox from his devices at that time, according to the affidavit.

As the Journal-World has reported, prior to his arrest, Deines was listed online as the visitor services manager at the downtown visitors center for Explore Lawrence, the convention and visitors bureau for the city. Kim Anspach, executive director of Explore Lawrence, said shortly after Deines’ arrest that his employment with Explore Lawrence had ended.