Hi harmless,
I can understand your frustration and this shows one of the many hurdles we face trying to regain some form of life after being punished.

The only examples of similar scenarios happening to me and their result are:

1) Whilst I was on bail (at that stage had been for 12 months) and prior to my Plea management hearing, and with the full consent of everyone, I went on a 2 month backpacking tour of SE Asia. When I pleaded guilty I knew sentencing was not going to happen for another year, so I informed them I was going again to see relatives. The Met Police took my passport then took me to Court to either put me on remand or have my passport ceased. 
The Judge supported me by not putting me on remand but allowed them to cease my passport. After sentencing and 4 months of writing to the Met police for my passport to be returned but no replies, I wrote to the aforementioned Judge and he told them to return it. Two months later I received a letter saying it was lost, very surprising. In the end I reported to the Passport office the police had lost and can I have a replacement. I got one and just smiled when questioned about the passport knowing they had not defeated me and they had a Judge chasing them.

2) I proved the date when I first met the female concerned. This was easy as her number appeared on my mobile call and text list. The police had problems with the females phone records as they also demonstrated blackmail text messages sent to me. The Police still managed to not only charge me with events on previous dates but also other subsequent dates when I had proof i was elsewhere in the country.
These dates where important to my sentencing as I suddenly went from a non-custodial expectation to a long sentence with life on the SOR.

In the end all I can suggest is that you have confidence in the evidence you have and yourself, obtain the physical evidence and organize your defence.

I believe Legal aid is means tested e.g. if you have more than 30k you pay a contribution, but that is if you loose.

I wish you success in your endeavors and remember there are always individuals here to listen..

Society suggests I must let go of all my expectations but I disagree, as whilst I have a voice, I have hope.

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope is for tomorrow else what is left if you remove a mans hope.
------------------------------

This forum supports these words, thank you Unlock and your contributors.

If you're near a Law Centre, they may be able to help, or refer you to someone who will help pro bono, especially as you seem to have a strong case. Failing that, your local Citizens Advice may be able to find someone.

=========================================================================================================

If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

Possibly, although I don't have the initial ready money to pay for the lawsuit. And Legal Aid only offer funds if the dispute is over more than some particular threshold, something like £10, 000

The lawsuit would cost several thousand, which is what I'm worth. And my equipment is worth about a thousand.

Shame, as according to my lawyer I basically couldn't lose.

One of the most primordial functions of police is protection of private property, a duty which they've totally abandoned, while enthusiastically and diligently enforcing a contraband law nobody had dreamed of till the 80s.

Maybe I'm being naive here, but can't the winning side normally claim their legal expenses from the losing side? Of course, if you're on the losing side....

=========================================================================================================

If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

FYI I saw a civil lawyer about the property and he said I had a case but  the lawsuit would cost more than the potential damages.

I’ll be honest, I’d need a lot more detail to be able to even have a stab at answering your questions and it’s probably detail you wouldn’t want to be shared on a public forum like this, so I won’t. I think you’d probably be more satisfied with a knowledgeable legal person who can be black and white as opposed to us forum people giving opinions.

Only you know whether or not your sentence was fair or not because only you know the extent of what you did. Viewing/possession/making (all the same thing) one category A image has a year custodial in the guidelines, for example. So if it’s case of arguing if your sentence is significantly too harsh, then I’d suggest an honest chat with your lawyer and decide if it’s worth your time and effort to drag it all up again, especially if you're not going to get much for your efforts. Sentencing guidelines are here. Is it worth drawing a line and leaving it in the past? Not easy to do, I know. My punishment didn't come in court, it came when my life and career were destroyed afterward and that extent certainly did not fit the crime, especially knowing some people get a caution.

If it’s a case of getting your equipment back, you absolutely should get everything back that was clean. I did, but I had to nag (in a nice way) for a long time and I did eventually get everything back apart from the one offending hard drive which, I’m told, has been destroyed. I’d imagine you could sue but how do you bring evidence when, ironically, the police have destroyed it all. You have my sympathy. I got almost everything back but I’ve asked for the documents off the offending hard drive back and I’m still waiting. Sorry I can’t be any more help.

=====
Fighting or Accepting - its difficult to know which is right and when.

•  After my conviction, the cops were called upon to produce a record of the evidence against me (I'll tell you why in a moment), and they listed the dates of seizure wrong, and mis-stated the abundance of the evidence (how wide spread indecent images were across electronic devices).
  
  
• The cops appear to have an incorrect date of birth for me somewhere in their system, but not everywhere (not on the sex offender register for example).

After emerging from jail, I had my lawyer write to the police in order to get my seized electronic equipment back.

In response, the police said they'd destroyed everything. This was an error, because only a fraction of the equipment was ever tainted.

The police then provided me (via my lawyer), a pdf format document, which was basically a list of all the physical items used in evidence against me, which described each of them as marked to be destroyed. The list erroneously described everything as tainted with indecent images and therefore marked for destruction.

•  Was I sentenced according to an exaggerated volume\abundance of evidence? The police's post-conviction account of the evidence listed all devices as tainted when in truth many were brand new and untouched. Very well - did this error happen prior to my plea?
  
  
• Was I convicted on an incorrectly dated burden of evidence. How far upstream in the course of events could this mis-dating go? The police's post-conviction list of which evidence is to be destroyed has the date of seizure wrong. Very well - did the error happen prior to my plea? 

The second sounds pretty infeasible (and insulting to the professionalism of my law firm) because checking dates is such basic routine, but hear me out. I was arrested on two occasions, months apart, and then recharged on the second occasion (I was accused of breaching bail and then electronic items on my person were taken off me, which contained deleted versions of incedent images, which in turn came to comprise the majority of the evidence, and then I fought my case from prison). On both arrests, evidence was seized. And evidence from both arrests was listed as evidence against me in the same single case. And this case was fought hastily from prison. Now I see the that evidence presented to me in the cops' post-conviction "destroy list" is ALL marked with the first of these two arrest dates. Therefore the small majority of the evidence is incorrectly dated in that recent police document. So although it's still the sort of error you would expect a lawyer to have covered, missing it might not quite be the totally infeasible abject negligence it might sound like at first. One of the more forgettable details of the case is that the majority of evidence came from the second arrest and not the first.

Regarding DOB:

Then there was another occasion when I ran out of petrol on the motorway and some cops pulled over and gave me a lift to the nearest petrol station.

When , as a matter of routine, they asked me my personal details (and fed them into a handheld computer), they acted puzzled for a few moments and asked if I had any "alternative dates of birth". I asked them "Come again , alternative dates of birth? " They said "yes", and I said "no". I knew there and then this had something to do with me being on record with the aforementioned conviction.

It was as if they recognised all my other details but not the DOB.

None of this presented any problems, although the offender managers did mention the incident to me when they next saw me "I hear you broke down etc"? So I know for a fact that the motorway cops looked me up and pinged a memo to the offender managers. But were momentarily confused about DOB.

Now, I have seen my date of birth got wrong elsewhere, in the newspapers. Out by five years. I have also seen it got right - on the sex register documents for example (I never lied there and all the printouts are accurate), and even the documents from the prosecution. But these are all organisations other than the originally-arresting police. Someone could have got my DOB wrong at first arrest, and right on the second arrest. Then the first DOB stuck with the regular police, and the second DOB went into to the prosecution process, parole, sex register police etc. I can see this leading to the regular police having a wrong DOB and the sex register and prosecution cops etc having a right date.

The sex register people *did* need to ask my DOB when I first saw them, after all, suggesting they didn't source it from the regular police.

I could just ask them, but would rather  not jinx anything  - e.g. is there some non-specific side-benefit e.g. a corrupted criminal record, and what does it say about my law firm if they overlooked this?

- Harmless