JonBenét Photographer Conviction Thrown Out in Stunning Court Twist

A photographer once tied to the JonBenét Ramsey story has scored a major courtroom win nearly three decades after the child beauty queen’s murder shocked the country.

Randall D. Simons, the man who photographed JonBenét just months before she was found dead in her Colorado home in 1996, had his child pornography conviction overturned by the Oregon State Supreme Court in a dramatic legal reversal.

According to reports, Simons was arrested in November 2019 after police accused him of repeatedly accessing child pornography images while using a public Wi-Fi network at an A&W restaurant. He was later convicted in 2021 on 15 counts of first-degree encouraging child sex abuse.

But now, Oregon’s highest court has stepped in and tossed that conviction, ruling that the year-long police investigation violated Simons’ privacy rights under the Oregon Constitution.

The court found that even though Simons had agreed to the restaurant’s terms of service — which banned obscene material and illegal activity and said the company could cooperate with law enforcement — he still had constitutional privacy protections. That decision could have a huge impact on what evidence can be used against him moving forward.

The case is now being sent back to Lane County Circuit Court, where a lower judge will have to decide what evidence should be thrown out because of the privacy violation.

While Simons’ legal battle is making headlines because of his past connection to JonBenét, the case itself has nothing to do with her death. The photos he took of JonBenét in 1996, later sold after her murder in 1997, reportedly showed her fully clothed in a pageant outfit.

Still, those images stirred backlash at the time and helped fuel the growing public debate over child beauty pageants in the aftermath of JonBenét’s killing. The controversy was so intense that, according to The Associated Press, Simons said back then he believed he would never work again.

Now, his name is back in the spotlight once more — this time because of a stunning court decision that could reshape the case against him.