Child pornography law, unintended consequences

I was doing some research into unintended consequences resulting from laws that are passed, and I happened across the following.

A 27 year old man was charged with possessing child pornography after police found a video in the man's home. Apparently, when he had been a 13 year old boy, he had taped a video of himself.

The prosecution did not dispute this, but nevertheless sought to charge the man with violation of the law.

This seems completely outrageous to me. Surely the politicians passing this law never intended it to apply in this type of situation, and certainly not with the harsh penalties they attached to the law. But the wording of the law made no distinction between whether the individual made the video of themselves, as a child.

 

Was he convicted?

 

Not sure what happened, it might still be pending.


These types of things are not extremely uncommon. Young teenage boys do all sorts of crazy things.
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20140721131237AADXiNi

 

In most cases like this, the States Statute of Limitations would apply and never proceeded to court. I can't find anything on this, but would bet most really young kid's have had pictures (porn to some) taken of them by parent's and still in their baby books.

 

That's the problem with these types of overly broad laws. They could potentially be used to criminalize all sorts of things that no one ever intended.
Then all the discretionary power gets left in the hands of the prosecutor. There are not really any checks and balances. Judges are typically very busy and most of the time they are basically just there to rubber stamp everything.

You might think the jury gets to decide, but that is often not how it works out in practice. It may be a long time before the case actually gets to trial, and many times the members of the jury are very ignorant and just follow whatever instructions they are given by the judge. The accused is not even allowed to be there during the indictment process, and even during the trial the judge might not even allow the defense to make certain arguments to the jury, when they do not have any direct bearing on the evidence at hand. Common sense does not always prevail in the court system. Judges are usually rather indifferent and "just doing their job", they have a long line of cases to hear. I am just saying that poorly written laws can open the door to abuse and injustice.

 

What are you arguing, exactly? That judges shouldnt enforce laws in certain situations, or that judges should give lenient sentences in circumstances that werent the reason the laws were created?

 

The letter of the law, or the spirit? I'm thinking how it was used might make a difference. Is he selling it as child porn, or was it just sitting in a drawer somewhere?

 

The police raided his house looking for drugs, then happened to find the video after tearing apart the house. There was no indication he had ever shown it to anyone else. In fact, for all anyone knows, he may just have made the video when he was 13 and then it just drifted in a box amongst his possessions. He probably forgot it was still there.


But what about other possible situations?

17 year old charged with 2 felonies after texting pictures of himself to his girlfriend:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jan/14/child-pornography-sexting

As if his girlfriend had not already seen in person what he texted her.

It gets even more ridiculous...

"Police have already taken photos of the boy’s genitals as a part of their investigation. But now they want to bring the teen to the hospital and inject him with something that will force an erection, to compare his erect penis to that in the video found on his phone."

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/07/09/3458159/manassas-erection-pictures-police/


There was another 16 year old boy charged with child pornography for making a sex video of himself and his girlfriend. The video was not distributed to anyone else.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/07/09/3458159/manassas-erection-pictures-police/

 

These cases and the original one seem to require the application of some common sense. If you are a teen sexting pics to your teen girl/boyfriend may be ill advised but shouldn't be a crime.

I cannot answer your poll though, every situation is different.

 

Unfortunately, common sense is all too often lacking in the court system. (There are various reasons why that is, apathy and perverse incentives for the prosecutor to win their case are two)
And sometimes the judge is simply constrained by the letter of the law.

 

Isn't this why we have judges? To interpret the law rather than blindly obey?

 

I agree. Judges can still enforce the law and give lenient sentences. For example, I know this analogy doesnt relate to US law, but a judge in Iran gave people who broke a law regarding dancing in public a "suspended sentence" to uphold the law without giving them a super harsh punishment.

 

Whats the difference? Elaborate.

 

But they don't have to. If the judge wanted, he could still give a very long sentence.
Should one person really be able to have that much power?

And sometimes the law simply will not let them. For example, when there are mandatory minimums.
They usually just go by the law, regardless of the consequences to the accused.

 

this is a problem with some, common sense is not used, he should not of been charged

this is just as bad as arresting two 17 years for taking pictures of themselves with their phones, stupid, but should not be illegal

.

 

What about the Virginia court case with the 17 yr old mentioned on the news a few months ago? Making him a sex offender would make zero legal sense, because those laws were created to protect kids from predators-and it would literally be a joke and travesty of the law to apply those laws to a situation like that.

 

It has already happened, in several cases.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...ses-a-growing-parental-rebellion-says-no.html
http://nj1015.com/19-year-old-hopat...he-a-candidate-for-lifetime-supervision-poll/

That's what happens when they pass a bad law (even though it might have seemed like a good idea at the time) and when judges are completely apathetic and "just there to do their job".

 

Uuuh really?

Letter of the law=follow the law as written blindly with no room for interpretation.

Spirit of the law=using your brain to determine what the reasoning is behind the law. This case for instance. Obviously this law was not created to prosecute a young person filming himself even though strictly going by the way it is written means that is illegal.

 

Are you saying the judge in Virginia should have let the kid go free, or give him a more lenient punishment, but still uphold the law?

 

Utah passed a law that made sexting a misdemeanor. Do you agree or disagree with that law?

 

So now the police want make child prnography? Doesn't make much sense.

That's the stupid thing about all posession laws. Just once I'd like to see a prosecutor submit some contraband into evidence and the judge have him arrested on the spot by the bailiff for possession.

 

Typical of Utah, always trying to control what people do in private.

 

yes. Don't you agree?

 

I dont get what youre saying. Youre saying "yes" in reply to which one of my questions?

 

Was he distributing it? What were the charges? For the record, he was in possession of kiddy porn. Pretty much a slam dunk.