Teens Prosecuted For Racy Photos 740
An anonymous reader writes with a story on CNet about two teens who were prosecuted under anti-child-porn laws in Florida for having made and emailed racy photos of each other. Both were under 18 years old, so the resulting pictures are clearly illegal; but the teens' intent was not to share the pictures with anyone else. An appeals court majority opinion found that emailing the photos from one of the kids to the other was a careless act that should, it seems, bring down the full weight of the law. A minority opinion argued that the laws were intended to protect children from exploitative adults, not from other children.
So then... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not children (Score:2, Interesting)
In my opinion, there should be a third legal status in between "child" and "adult" for teens so shit like this doesn't explode.
Re:So then... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Just Wait Until Your District Attorney Gets Hom (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Think of the children! (Score:1, Interesting)
This reminds me of a case in Wisconsin several year back where an 18 year 1 month old guy got his 15 year 11 month old girl friend pregnant. He applied for a marriage license. The lady behind the counter noticed his girl friend was under 16 and they were more than 2 years apart in age so he was arrested. He was prosecuted and convicted. The jury said the judge's instructions didn't leave them any choice but to convict.
Reminds me of an interesting case I read once (Score:4, Interesting)
However, I somehow doubt that that's going to be the holding in this case. If being under 18 gave you license to take and distribute nude photographs of yourself, you can only imagine the consequences. Actually, I think they did an episode of Law & Order about this.
It's actually much, much worse than that... (Score:3, Interesting)
So it's Florida that leads us to the police state... I woulda guessed California or Boston, at least after the last few months...
What if... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is just hypothetical, of course, but it does illustrates many issues here. The teen case is similar to this scenario; and perhaps we'll need an actual case to make the laws sane again. Of course, anyone who does this will risk everything.
But then again, this old song of "protecting the children" is a wash, anyway, made worthless by those who have the power to judge and prosecute, but do not exercise sound judgement.
And the really sad fact? There are real children who are really being exploited, and these silly laws do nothing to help them. It's all a joke-- a wash, where the guilty goes free and the innocent are punished to make it appear as though the system "works".
Gotta love the USA.
Re:So then... (Score:5, Interesting)
Cause if this 17 year old & 16 year old have to register as sex offenders for the next five years, I would imagine that worse than almost any potential psychological trauma from having your ex-(boy/girl)friend show their friends some nude pictures of you...
1984's Anti-sex League (Score:1, Interesting)
eh, the US over-reacts one way... (Score:5, Interesting)
Discuss.
Re:Think of the children! (Score:5, Interesting)
So in the vein of "Who Guards the Guards?" What recourse do we as the public have against these people who twist the intention of the law into a worse crime? I would agree that this prosecution, and labeling as sex offenders has done considerable damage to these minors. Can you criminally prosecute a judge for malicious abuse of power? And as a side note: Will this be taken off of their records when they turn 18? After all they are minors.
Bad analogy time (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Think of the children! (Score:5, Interesting)
Bullshit. If these two were 5-year-olds that were NOT having sex, but just taking pictures of themselves, then you would not call the cops in. You'd take the camera away, destroy the film, and tell them not to do that again.
We are treating these 16-year-olds differently because they ARE old enough to know what they're doing. And since they're old enough to know what they're doing, they can be tried as adults. That alone should be enough to negate the kiddie porn charges for the pictures of themselves.
Are you proposing that laws should be selectively enforced on an adhoc basis?
To a certain degree, yes. The cops and judges did their jobs and performed their roles as the system intended. However, the DA is there to make sure that justice is served. The DA is granted the right to select which cases are prosecuted and which are not. The DA should have shut this one down as soon as he heard of it.
Simple (Score:1, Interesting)
Teachers are in deep sh** already... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Madness! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Not surprisingly, I disagree (Score:3, Interesting)
Sub-conscious slip of the fingers: that should have been "possession", not "position."
Taken further, a precedence could have sparked an entire industry of teens archiving photos they intend to sell as soon as they reach a legal age to do so. Not a battle anyone would want to take up, methinks.
Re:Think of the children! (Score:4, Interesting)
This is part of a moral panic in America about 'Children who molest'. Every time I think about what Americans are doing to innocent children, I get very mad.
I urge every slashdotter who reads this to go out and learn more about this phenomenon. Ethical Treatment for All Youth [ethicaltreatment.org] documents what's happening to kids across America right now in situations like this, and the devastating consequences.
Re:So then... (Score:2, Interesting)
True, so far, these people that have gotten the extra time were also storing HUGE databases of real-life child porn, and more than likely deserve a nice, long, jail sentence, but, say it with me:
"THOUGHTCRIME IS NOT A CRIME."
And actually, I don't download lolicon, but take this as an example: In several series, characters may LOOK young, but... Take Etna from Disgaea 1 & 2. She wears skimpy clothing (well, everyone in the game does), and looks like she's about 12. But she, being a demon, is 1470 years old. How does a judge determine what counts as the legal age of a person WHO DOESN'T EXIST? Does he look at it and say, "Well, she looks like she's 17 years old, so... ILLEGAL!" (Because then an attorney can say, "Well, she's at least 19 in my eyes." And then the courtroom becomes an episode of Jerry Springer.
Plus, the idea of being arressted, FOR ANYTHING, and suddenly, the police want to add years on to my potential sentence for having pictures which may or may not be sexual in nature, of characters who were not only not sexually abused by me or anyone, but don't actually have lives to be abused?
WHY does this have to be so fucking complicated? In my opinion, it really doesn't have to be. If someone abused a child, whether or not he took pictures, he needs to be locked up. Same for attempting to do this. But at no point should LOOKING at a picture (especially one that may have been planted on your computer) be considered a precursor to rape. (Because, let's face it, if looking at a picture of a child is a sign of rape, walking into a bank should be a sign of robbery and picking up a knife should be considered intent to kill.)
Re:Time to worry (Score:3, Interesting)
Are you not reading the news lately and in particular the OP? The teacher who received pictures like this from some student attempting blackmail will be in an immediate bind: If they don't report the pictures and it comes out, they will of course suffer the consequences of seemingly requesting illegal pictures in return for special treatment. However, if they do report it they will immediately be implicated in the same - sure, with no evidence, but that doesn't seem to matter these days. As with this situation, merely suspecting the possibility of being guilty will be enough to cause a massive uproar, investigation, etc. The teacher in question will no longer be trusted by any Schoolboard or Parent, even if exonerated later on. Their lives will be torn apart by the legal system - who to be fair would have to investigate them as a matter of course - and the results will be devastating.
I suppose its only a matter of time before this happens as well, given the tools are readily available, and paranoia and misunderstanding concerning internet technology is high. At least when it happens, the concerned individuals will still be likely to get a trial - no matter how biased it might be - which is better than if they were "Enemies of the State" and could just be thrown into Guantanamo without recourse to a trial or lawyers :P
The US seems to be on a long, slippery road to losing complete sight of its ideals and founding principals, I sincerely hope that it can turn around and find them again
Re:Not children (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you think justice is served by this court upholding the letter of the law? Remember, I'm asking whether it's JUST, not whether the law is being obeyed.
Literal readings of laws without regard for the context in which they were passed leads to problems. First, you end up with loopholes -- behavior that is clearly intended to be illegal but which is technically within the letter of the law. Second, you end up with cases (like this one, perhaps) where activities that were not intended to be criminal are inadvertently illegal. This could be considered a reverse loophole -- one that gets you INTO trouble rather than out of it.
The courts should make every effort to err on the side of the defendant when interpreting laws, I believe. This is consistent with the "innocent until proven guilty" doctrine. This means that loopholes, while unfortunate, will be respected until they're closed by additional legislation. It also means that reverse loopholes should NOT be treated with the full force of law simply because a law was poorly crafted.
Laws are not passed in a vacuum. There are transcripts of the debates and discussions that occurred, and the bills that introduce these laws frequently explain the reasons for instituting them. The courts SHOULD use this information to divine the intent of the legislature when faced with a case where a literal reading appears not to lead to a just outcome.
In this case, a minority felt that the legislature did not intend to criminalize this behavior based on the history of the law. I can't say first-hand, but I'm inclined to believe they did their homework before penning that opinion. Given that, I would argue that the majority who chose to throw the book at these teens are the ones "legislating from the bench." Sure, they've got the letter of the law behind them, but it doesn't appear that the legislature crafted the law they intended to craft, at least based on the minority's opinion. Given that the judge's law is to uphold justice, the majority has simply failed in their duty.
Re:Think of the children! (Score:5, Interesting)
Speculation, but speculation that's exceedingly likely to be correct. Look up the case of Glenarlow Wilson, a child in neighboring Georgia who will be registered as a child molester for the rest of his life, after serving a mandatory 10-year prison sentence -- because, at the age of 17, he had consensual oral sex with a 16-year-old girl. Georgia law at the time drew no distinction whatsoever about the age of the "molester"; any oral sex involving a minor, even if the partner was also a minor, was felony child molestation and left no room for judicial discretion in sentencing.
Re:So then... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Think of the children! (Score:5, Interesting)
Laws that don't allow for circumstantial sentencing should be abolished outright. There is never a reason to pass a law that does not take circumstances into account. It is not a question of whether the law will be abused, but a question of when, how, and how frequently....
On the other hand, I feel that with the exception of a handful of very basic laws (rape, murder, theft), all laws should be required to have a sunset provision that makes them expire unless renewed. That would force heinous laws like this one to at least get rehashed every ten years or so....
Re:The DA should be ashamed (Score:1, Interesting)
Mod me -5 (pothead) if you will, but that passage from Niemoller has never been more appropriate. If you didn't speak up when they wanted to keep ratcheting up the War on (some) Drugs, you should slink away from this article and find something else to comment on. Think about it for roughly five seconds, and you'll have to note: the rationale behind prohibition of any substance has primarily been that people who do these things might commit other crimes more often. No, you most likely haven't said a word against such a draconian state because you feel that some preventative enforcement is a good thing.
That would make you hypocrites, if true. I've got nothing against busting people (whether high or not) who commit crimes against others - driving under the influence, rape, robbery, murder, assault, fraud, whatever. I just think preemptive enforcement is a load of shit, and thanks to a great many of my fellow countrymen, it will go on for far longer than it ever should have.
(The YOU referenced throughout this post is not specifically the author of the parent, rather I used the parent as a springboard for my rant. The YOU in this post is YOU, the reader, who will likely not get off your ass even after this. You won't write a letter to your congressman, so why should anyone expect that you'd actually stand up and say FUCK THIS where anyone could hear you? Slink back into your caves, play your video games and surf the internet for porn, Uncle Sam is keeping you safe and tucked in at night and there's no reason to stick your neck out for anyone else.)
Re:Logic in America is going down the shitter (Score:1, Interesting)
America is moving toward a Christian fundamentalist version of sharia law. So far, we haven't imposed stoning as a punishment for things deemed to be sexual misconduct. But permanent listing as a sexual offender comes close. By the time these kids are 25 and find they can't live most places, can't have any job which includes interacting with children, can't have many other kinds of careers, they may wish they had been stoned to death, since they'll likely be homeless somewhere in the US.
As an example of how the law can be misapplied, many sheriffs in rural aresa have been looking at maps with circles of exclusion around playgrounds, schools, daycare centers, etc., with an eye to finding "gaps" in the coverage. Then all they have to do is install a "mini-park" in or near the "gap" and they can very nearly make their town or county a "total exclusion zone" for anyone with a conviction. How's that for being a duplicitous bastard?
Re:Jesus (Score:5, Interesting)
Thank goodness. I've met enough kids whose parents "mind their own business" and they end up really eff'ed up. Part of being a parent is sticking your nose in your kids' beeswax. It's called "caring".
I had a policy with my daughter. I let her know when I was "snooping" (such as calling her friends' parents to introduce myself when she was going to spend the night, or stopping by her school to make a pest of myself). Never did anything like that behind her back. And you know what? She was cool with it. I didn't have to sneak around and read her diary or collect the hair from her brushes to check for drug traces (those tests were just coming out then). And she knew that I cared enough to try to protect her, even though we both knew I couldn't protect her from everything.
I made myself part of my daughter's life (as did her mom, my wife). I also let her know that I loved her more than the oxygen I breathe. Then, I rolled the dice. If she did something stupid, I explained to her why it was stupid, and her mom made sure to talk to her about sex early enough (and believe me, her mom knows sex). Occasionally, when she'd bring a boy home, I'd happen to be cleaning my collection of combat knives or demonstrating my dog's attack training. Now my girl is 18 (for another week or so) and has never been pregnant and there are no visible track marks or bruises. Most of it was luck, but I have never regretted making myself part of her world. It's too easy to just be passive and too absorbed in my own world and then I'd have to leave it up to chance to make sure she makes it to 18 without too much damage. I couldn't live with that, so I did it the way my parents did it, and it turns out they weren't as stupid as I thought. Like the old saying goes, "my parents got smarter as I got older."
Now that I got that out of the way, some prosecutor needs a stern talking-to for going after two 18 year-olds trading cheesecake photos. He probably never played doctor or got any himself, so now he doesn't know his pecker from his elbow, but he's got the statute memorized. We need to have much smarter people than are currently involved in the justice system for minors. We've got way too many young ones who are having their lives messed up with brushes with the legal system, while a whole bunch of at-risk kids get ignored. "Getting tough" was never the answer and "zero tolerance" is for manufacturing quality control, not dealing young humans.
Re:Strupod.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Jesus (Score:3, Interesting)
As an aside, if our laws become so draconian that it's impossible to not be a criminal in some way, might that encourage people to just become rapant law breakers? When you can't win, why try?
Amen. We'll soon end up with half the country guarding the other half.
Draconian laws aren't the only problem. Over zealous prosecution is an equal contributor. Today's careerist prosecutors are judged by their conviction rates. There's no telling how many people are railroaded by the Mike Nifongs in our criminal justice system.
2 for 1: Free HIV with the purchase of crystal (Score:3, Interesting)
Anal on crystal meth reachs levels of debauchery which heterosexuals have no grasp of. The combination of the two makes that awkward, snappy preacher a much harder man than most any of you ever will be. Imagine, if you will, two men fucking and fucking to the very limits of what they are physically capable of doing--and doing that for hours without slowing down. With enough meth you can stay up for a week, but, if you know what you are doing, you can turn that pile of crystal into a multi-day, multi-partner orgy with only the most minimal breathers. You can fuck to a point where you normally wouldn't just have lost interest, but also been experiencing too much pain to continue. Nothing matters but the fuck: not pain, not protection, and not exhaustion.
Just think about that next time you see him dressed pretty for the cameras.
Re:Jesus (Score:4, Interesting)
so you're kind of comparing two different social structures.
Re:from my observation (Score:1, Interesting)