Uhm, what?
OK:
The court concludes that a constitutionally effective defense to a child pornography charge does not include the right to victimize additional minors by creating new child pornography in the course of preparing and presenting a defense
Sounds pretty bad. In this case, a defense lawyer photoshopped some fake child pornography as part of a defense. Weird.
October 24th, 2011 at 9:31 am
That is akin to the Indiana lawyer defending a marijuana dealing case went out and brought marijuana from the state’s snitch. *sigh*
Couldn’t you like run that by the secretary or receptionist? Wouldn’t they tell you that that’s a bad idea?
October 24th, 2011 at 9:34 am
I think it’d be more like buying oregano that looks like marijuana.
October 24th, 2011 at 11:01 am
“The Who” defense?
We’ve lost whole volumes (well, scrolls) of the cases of M.Tullius Cicero, but this just has to be in there. In pretty straightforward Latin, too.
October 24th, 2011 at 11:10 am
His defense was valid; “See how easy it is to make fake stuff. The stuff my client had was faked too”
The problem is, he used photos of 2 real kids faces to make the photos he used as a demo… Which is damn likely to harm those two kids, thus he is civilally liable.
October 24th, 2011 at 12:31 pm
But weren’t these stock licensed photos that you pay a fee to use as you see fit? If he paid the license fee, I don’t see a case. The models were paid for the image, and licensed it, unless specified in the contract, they no standing for harm.
October 24th, 2011 at 1:13 pm
This will fail if appealed to the SCOTUS.
They had struck down the portions of the original child porn laws that forbade child-porn cartoons and photoshops because no children were actually victimized making them.
Congress responded by passing a slightly differently worded law that re-forbade CP cartoons.
If this gets in front of the SCOTUS again, Congress’s new law will be struck down again.
October 24th, 2011 at 1:14 pm
chris: then the parents of the two kids in question need to sue.
October 24th, 2011 at 1:15 pm
phenicks: License to use a photo does not include license to libel or slander using them.
October 24th, 2011 at 1:15 pm
As Chris notes, the defense is valid. The problem is that there’s no good way to demonstrate it for the jury without making fake child porn and using real kids’ faces in the process.
The ruling basically says “Your defense is valid, but you’re not allowed to do what is necessary to prove it to the jury.” Unfortunately, the judge also has a valid point – doing this victimizes the kids whose images were used in the process.
October 24th, 2011 at 1:18 pm
@ Kristopher: They did sue. That’s what the article is all about.
October 24th, 2011 at 3:44 pm
I’m not seeing the alleged “victimization” here, since the entire point was that he was publicly pointing out that the kids whose pictures were used in the demonstration had never been victimized in reality.
Where precisely is the harm to have come from, given that the pictures in question were displayed only in court, to the jury and others in the courtroom?
Too tenuous by far, on the available information.