News Photo by Julie Riddle Bradley Avery, right, and attorney Dan White listen as jurors hand down a guilty verdict in Alpena’s 26th Circuit Court on Thursday.

ALPENA — Jurors on Thursday found Bradley Avery, of Alpena, guilty of surreptitiously videotaping teenage girls while they changed clothes during the 2017 Alpena County Fair.

They found Avery not guilty of possession of child pornography related to six images police found among a large collection of legal adult pornography on Avery’s phone in 2019.

Jurors rendered their verdict at about 2:30 p.m. after about three hours of deliberation in Alpena’s 26th Circuit Court.

“I am very appreciative of the jury’s hard work in this case,” said Alpena County Prosecutor Cynthia Muszynski after the verdict. “No one should have to be asked to review this type of evidence.”

Jurors during the trial had to view several images depicting young people, possibly minors, engaged in sexually explicit activity.

They also watched secretly recorded videos of three teenage girls changing clothes.

“The victims are very relieved to have justice after several years of patiently waiting for closure,” Muszynski said in a written statement.

Defense attorney Matt Wojda similarly thanked jurors for their efforts.

“Obviously, our client maintains his innocence,” Wojda said. “We expect there will be an appeal and believe there are various grounds on which an appeal can be successful.”

Jurors could choose who to believe, Muszynski said during her closing statement on Thursday morning.

Avery’s story clashed with that of witnesses, who said he had sole use of the computer on which police found five videos of teenage girls changing clothes, captured by a camera hidden in a County Fair Board storage room.

The girls, participants in the 2017 fair pageant, usually changed clothes in the room Avery used as an office but, on the date in question, Avery told them to use a storage room where a hidden camera secretly recorded their activity, according to one witness.

Avery claimed the girls asked to use the smaller room, he testified during this week’s trial.

He also claimed many people had access to the computer assigned to him as a fair board member and could have used it to capture video from the hidden camera.

Police seized Avery’s computer in February 2018, two days after the Fair Board confronted Avery about money Avery later admitted he embezzled while serving as Fair Board treasurer.

The video files were deleted from the computer on the same day Avery admitted to falsifying financial reports, according to police reports obtained by The News via a Freedom of Information Act request.

Shortly before the 2017 fair, Avery brought a wireless camera to the Fair Board office and placed it in the room where the girls typically changed clothes during the fair, the Fair Board’s president testified.

Avery claimed the camera helped to safeguard the fair board’s money.

Six months after that fair, the Fair Board confronted Avery about the money he had stolen over the course of about a year, Muszynski reminded jurors.

Jurors did not believe Avery’s assertion that he had nothing to do with the secret filming and found him guilty on three counts of capturing an image of an unclothed person.

They found that Muszynski did not prove that Avery knew about six possible child pornography images police found on Avery’s phone among a large collection of legal adult pornography.

Avery admitted to searching for images of teen porn but claimed he only wanted to see legal images of 18- or 19-year-olds engaging in sexual activity, not photos of younger teens.

Avery claimed to not know about the six photos, which an expert testified were downloaded to his phone automatically by advertising from a legal adult porn site.

Jurors announced their verdict early Thursday afternoon after a full day of testimony on Wednesday.

In addition to the guilty charges for the recordings, the jury also found Avery guilty on one count of using a computer to commit a crime.

Avery will be sentenced at a date yet to be set by the court.

A person convicted of capturing the image of an unclothed person can be sentenced to up to five years in prison, depending on their circumstances and the circumstances of the crime.

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693 or jriddle@thealpenanews.com. Follow her on Twitter @jriddleX.

This story has been modified to reflect that a person convicted of capturing the image of an unclothed person can be sentenced to up to five years in prison. That information was incorrect in a previous version of the story.