By  Seamus McGraw   

Ben Fawley

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(Crime Library)  Mathews County, Va. — Lawyers representing Ben Fawley have been given the green light to hire both a private investigator and a computer expert to sift through evidence — much of it graphic and salacious — to help defend Fawley against first-degree murder charges in the death of Virginia Commonwealth University co-ed Taylor Behl.

At a brief hearing last week, attended by a freshly shorn Fawley, Mathews County Circuit Judge William H. Shaw agreed to allow Fawley's defense team to pay each of the experts up to $3,500.

Judge William H. Shaw

Fawley's lawyer, William E. Johnson, who is being paid a fraction of that amount for his services, told the court that he needed the experts to help "level the playing field," according to published reports.

Defense Attorney William Johnson

The experts' chief responsibility will be to track down and analyze evidence from a variety of Internet websites, Johnson reportedly told the court, much of it sexual in nature and highly graphic and some of it focusing what Johnson called "matters of fetish, bondage and pornography."

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