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"Accidental" Download Sending 22-Year-Old Man To Prison 1127
An anonymous reader writes "Two years ago, Matthew White searched Limewire for porn. He was looking for 'College Girls Gone Wild,' but ended up downloading some images of child pornography. This was accidental, according to White, and he quickly deleted the images. A year later, the FBI showed up on his family's doorstep and asked to search the computer. After thorough sleuthing, the FBI found some images 'deep within the hard drive.' According to White, the investigators agreed that he himself could not have accessed the files anymore. Matthew now faces 20 years in jail for possession of child pornography. On advice from his lawyer, he intends to plead guilty so that he will 'hopefully' end up with 3.5 years in jail, 10 years probation and a registration as a sex offender. 'The FBI could not comment on this specific case, but said if child pornography is ever downloaded accidentally, the user needs to call authorities immediately. They may confiscate your computer, but it's better than the alternative.'"
Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely ridiculous
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:4, Insightful)
Get a different lawyer.
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Insightful)
Get a different lawyer.
Because we don't have nearly enough people in prison that we have to start going after the truly marginal cases like this one. If the FBI could recover the files, then they could also recover the fact they were old and the kid tried to delete them.
There are two cases the law needs to change to consider:
- Something truly accidental, like this case. Or some malware infection that tracks it in. Intent has to figure into the equation somewhere.
- Sexting where teens are sending photos of themselves.
Those cases weren't envisioned when the laws were drafted and putting these kinds of people on a sex offender registry dilutes the effectiveness and intent of that tool. This and that stupid law that says if you tap into an unencrypted wifi spot you're breaking the law. Insanity.
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Insightful)
How about curiosity?
There were lots of people who received email with attached encrypted zipfiles containing malware ( http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39147909,00.htm [zdnet.co.uk] ), and would enter the included passwords to access and run them. Some even feel a sort of compulsion to do it.
Then there's the case of "Traci Lords". She was a porn star who lied about her age and appeared in porn films and even Penthouse magazine when she was 15. So guess how many people might possess child porn unknowingly? Apparently those pictures and films are considered child porn by US laws.
Also think before you google for "Traci Lords" or similar stuff. Nowadays it is common for Google to automatically include pics as part of search results. I wonder how accurate the filters are at excluding stuff that is legally considered child porn in jurisdictions that you might wander into one day.
Do you feel lucky?
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:4, Interesting)
Then there's the case of "Traci Lords". She was a porn star who lied about her age and appeared in porn films and even Penthouse magazine when she was 15. So guess how many people might possess child porn unknowingly? Apparently those pictures and films are considered child porn by US laws.
Along similar lines, consider that here in the UK it was legal to publish and/or possess porn featuring 16-year-olds until only a few years ago. Porn mags used to regularly publish pictures of 16 and 17 year olds. Tabloid "newspapers" often also featured such pictures.
My guess is that this results in a situation where probably >10% of the population is currently guilty of a serious offence that they may well have no knowledge they have committed. This possibly includes a number of public libraries and/or newspaper publishers. I wonder if the offices of the Sun have destroyed the back copies of the papers they published that featured nude pictures of 16-year-old Linsey Dawn McKenzie [wikipedia.org]? Legally speaking, I believe they ought to have done, and technically somebody could do time over it if they haven't.
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Insightful)
Possession of photos or videos (like Brooke Shields' Pretty Baby) shouldn't even be considered a crime. Whoever CREATED the image should go to jail, because he/she directly injured a minor, but not the possessor who did not harm anyone.
"The War on Images" is as insane as the War on Drugs..... except even dumber. It's reached the point where you can even draw *cartoons* of children having sex or masturbating (think Japanese hentai/anime). Where's the victim in that case? No where.
Re:What proof do you got? (Score:4, Informative)
>>>He claims it was done by accident, that the files magically got buried deep within the system. Yeah, because that stuff happens. Not.
Actually it does. I suspect the FBI used an "undelete" program to scour the whole drive, and piece together various sectors to form an illegal image. As the FBI admitted, the user would have not been able to do that under normal circumstances. ----- Who kows what crap is on my or Your hard drive, just waiting to be uncovered. Just because you "delete" something doesn't mean it can't be recovered later on
Re:What proof do you got? (Score:4, Informative)
>>>I smell an excuse. "oh it wasn't me, it was scary computers that did it"...... Smell the bullshit.
I smell someone who doesn't understand computers, and naively believes that when he deletes files, they are gone. I hope someday YOU get caught when the FBI digs-up 2 or 3 year old files from your HDD. Maybe I'll call them now and give thema tip that SmallFurryCreature downloaded some illegal stuff. Are you SURE you're computer is clean, and you haven't broken any laws? I bet you have. We all have.
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but at what point do we stop with all this overreaching by authorities and say "F- you, get out of my life and back off with the BS laws"? How long do we keep tolerating this, and how far do we let it go?
The worst part is the attitude of the FBI here ... not "gee the system is fscked", but just "hand yourself in to the nearest authorities if this happens to you, you guilty citizen". Ridiculous ... if I'm not harming anyone, then nobody has any business what bits lie in the deleted areas of my hard disk, least of all some useless morons who happen to be employed by government.
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:4, Insightful)
Simply deleting a file doesn't remove the bits from the drive.
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, the blurb says the guy did erase it. The investigators found it in a "deep" scan. Which means they just used a block editor.
FWIW, there are loads of ways you could have this happen to you. Like this for instance [consumerist.com] I recall a story where a church bought a new computer and it was full of porn too, but I can't find the story.
BTW, posting as AC to tell my story. This happened to me once and I wasn't even looking for porn. I've had two downloads through bittorrent that weren't what they claimed to be. One was a cd full of kiddie stuff claiming to be an engineering application. Terrified me! I deleted it and used bcwipe about a dozen times. [jetico.com]
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Insightful)
The FBI malware is invisible until it causes your wipe to fail (pay particular attention to wiping the recycle bin, even if there's nothing in it). In that case, the best solution for a failed wipe is to format and then wipe the entire drive.
As others have wisely noted, calling the FBI would be a bad idea. Those bust-hungry thugs would interrogate you and then twist your words into a confession of guilt before making a media circus of the whole thing. You'd think they'd be busy with real crime.
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:4, Insightful)
posted anonymous because I don't want to be linked with anything to do with child porn even linked to talking about it.
Thoughtcrime, anyone?
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Insightful)
The presumption of innocence IS THE CORRECT ATTITUDE. Humans have an illogical tendency to jump to conclusions, presume guilt, and go on witch hunts. Presuming innocence until proven guilty by facts is the best way to stop that irrational behavior and protect the innocent. Someone who like child porn and intentionally seeks it out (and is therefore believed to be directly or indirectly a danger to children, the whole reasoning behind child porn being illegal in the first place) is not going to download one video, delete it, and never download it again. Everything about the circumstances points to his story being correct, Limewire is famous for misnamed files, and its not the first time I've heard of there being kiddie porn on it. He did not have a collection, nor did he have it even saved, it was clearly deleted. There is no evidence he distributed it, sought it, or wanted it. If there is more to this case the FBI needs to reveal it, of course they won't have to because they have used the fact the legal system is rigged in their favor in this kind of case to scare him into a plea bargain.
I know someone who is happily married, with 2 children. Their family has a very difficult time finding a place to live. The reason? When the Father was 18, he had consensual sex with his future wife, who was 16. Her family found out and pressed statutory rape charges. As a result, he is on the sex offender list, which is especially ironic because the "punishment" now hurts the supposed victim, and her children. The state has done far more harm to her then he ever did.
The police have no interest in justice. Every time you see a policemen, do not think he is there to protect you, or seek justice. His sole purpose is to be a crony to a politician, whether that politician is the DA, or the Mayor, or the governor, or the President. His job is to implicate as many people as possible in as many violations of the law as possible, to be used against them at his masters discretion. Every politician wants to look tough on crime, especially on pedophiles, and keep the population certain that HE is the one standing between their children and the groping hands of molesters. So the police are encouraged to round up as many people who can be labeled pedophiles as possible, and make sure the public is constantly reminded they are walking amongst them.
Just look at this article. The FBI tells people if you download child porn accidentally, call the authorities immediately. Presumably so they can offer you a plea "bargain" like this guy for turning yourself in, and only give you 3.5 years, plus 10 years parole, and a lifetime of discrimination on the sex offenders list. It is the exact opposite of what any competent lawyer would tell you to do, which is never admit to anything, never talk to the police, never allow them in your house, car, or computer without a warrant.
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Insightful)
But, over two year and at least one or two defrags (I'd hope), the data would have been overwritten and unrecoverable.
I'd suspect that it wasn't just one file that was old. The FBI doesn't just show up to random people's houses to look for child porn. They had a lead, which I'm sure was more substantial. To get the search warrant, they had to prove probable cause to the judge. That warrant has to be specific to what they are searching for. It wasn't just a blanket "we think he's bad, we're going to find why". Nor was it "he downloaded College Girls Gone Wild 99.wmv, we want a warrant".
They don't talk about the specifics of what they already had on him. I'm sure it was relevant though. It definitely wasn't a courtesy check for kiddie porn. By the time they show up and start asking questions, they already have a case, they're just completing their investigation.
The sheriff's department showed up to my ex-mother-in-law's house a couple years ago. They wanted to search her computer, along with any other computer in the house. They took her computer, and brought it back a few days later. The case was, she had a tenant in her spare room. He had used her computer. They already had a list of things which is what brought them there. Unfortunately, she didn't know about the pending investigation, and I was there between the time they knew there was a problem and the time they showed up to investigate. While I was there, she was complaining that her computer was slow. I did a sweep for malware, cleared the browser cache and history, and defragged the drive. I don't know that there was anything to find. I told the investigator exactly what I had done. They weren't able to recover anything related to the case, because it was now clean. The most they found was my searches for flight times and weather reports, and items related to her work, all of which happened after I cleaned the machine up. I didn't notice anything while I was cleaning, but I also wasn't looking for tracks of kiddie porn.
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Insightful)
> I'd suspect that it wasn't just one file that was old. The FBI doesn't just show up to random people's houses to look for child porn.
They don't. But they can show up when people click on bait links that the FBI themselves plant:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9899151-38.html [cnet.com]
So Mr Smythe one day accidentally clicks and downloads a child porn image. He deletes it.
Then maybe a year later, Mr Smythe is looking for porn, and clicks on various links, and by mistake (or curiosity) clicks on "Minors having sex".
And the next day the FBI kick down his door, and search his computer for child porn.
They find nothing, except one _deleted_ child porn image.
From the article - the FBI won't provide any files: "The supposed video files actually were gibberish and contained no illegal images."
Think that can't happen? Why not? The "Justice System" has been merrily charging children for "distributing child porn" when they consensually send each other nude pics of themselves.
They love to say they are protecting the children. But it's clearly a lie!
How can you say you are protecting children when you are charging _children_, threatening them with decades in prison and actually sending some of them to prison for _consensual_[1] sex.
Which do you think will scar the child more and for longer? Being "touched" by the Government or being touched by the average pervert?
[1] How do you think you would feel if you were a 14 year old girl, have a 17 year old boyfriend, and you two have sex a few times (hey it feels good right?) and then sometime later, the cops take him away and The Government sends him to prison for a few decades and everyone says bad things about him and that he did a very bad thing to you. So who is scarring who for life here? If it was clearly consensual, maybe just let the minor decide whether it was rape or not, when the minor achieves legal adulthood.
Re:Next time read at least the complete summary (Score:4, Insightful)
Bull, that is only true if you are purchasing it ... and if you post an ad saying you'll pay for it. Viewing it in your own home does absolutely jack shit to anyone or anything. A crime must have a victim, period.
Re:Next time read at least the complete summary (Score:5, Interesting)
I just took a look at that monkey attack lady that appeared on Oprah, did I just create demand for more monkey attacks on people?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
What's a district attorney to do... (Score:5, Insightful)
What's a district attorney to do when someone anonymously sends the D.A. an email with kiddie porn attached? Technically, the D.A. downloaded it.
Re:What's a district attorney to do... (Score:5, Insightful)
Start a witch hunt to find who sent it. Remember, attack is the best defense.
Prison Sentences (Score:5, Interesting)
Whatever the (dis)merits of the application of the law are here you Americans really, really need to shorten your prison sentences.
Where I live (Finland), it's hard to actually be imprisoned for 20 years even if you murder someone. Sure, technically killers get lifetime sentences, but they are mostly let out after a decade or so.
And despite us technically having lots of killers and other criminals on the loose, this country is very safe. I believe the science actually says that prisons manufacture and "enhance" criminals.
Re:Prison Sentences (Score:5, Informative)
Politics drives it. In the US, no politician dares look soft on crime. Advocating ridiculously long sentences is a quick and easy way to bolster an image. And failing to be tough is an even quicker way to end a political career. Huckabee is getting flak because one man he let out early has shot and killed 4 police officers. Type "Dukakis" into a search engine and one of the first things that shows up is Willie Horton.
Re:Prison Sentences (Score:5, Insightful)
And frankly, and I say this as Democrat, Huckabee's decision wasn't wrong. 100+ years for the crimes was crazy. Even letting him out via parole wasn't unreasonable.
He then apparently went crazy. Actual mental illness, which he didn't have any sign of when they were letting him out.
The point he should been locked up is when he ended up in police custody again a while back. It would have been nice if someone had noticed he was batshit insane at that time, held a competency hearing, and locked him up on that while he was helped.
But we stopped caring about the mentally ill in this society a while back.
Re:Prison Sentences (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed - there's a few studies that show that excessive prison sentences don't act as a deterrent. Only increasing the likelihood you get caught does.
Also, for the worst crime - murder - neither is much of a deterrent. The murder rate is low here in Norway., but almost all of the ones which do happen are done by mentally unstable people - e.g. during or after a breakup, or when just plain mentally ill. For these, there is rarely any calculation at all where either the length of the sentence or the chance of getting caught (almost 100%) are considered.
Re:Prison Sentences (Score:4, Insightful)
She would never get a gun, carry it around or learn to use it. Remember, many don't even try to escape, they would be too afraid that he would find out, or still "think" they're in love with them (ever listened to Better Man?), etc.
Besides, in a small house (most of them are), she wouldn't have the space to fire a clean shot before he grabbed her.
And there's one victim even more problematic: the kids. They get beat up too, but guns would never help them.
Re:Prison Sentences (Score:4, Insightful)
Those women could also choose to just walk away from those abusive husbands/boyfriends, and report them to police. Saves a lot of violence both ways. But for some reason most of them tend to say. Why that is I truly don't know nor understand.
Re:Prison Sentences (Score:4, Insightful)
As for your wife, she could easily defeat an attacker. A screaming woman will actually stop most attackers,
That is just plain stupid. By claiming that screaming will easily defeat an attacker, you are claiming that all the 90 thousands some odd rapes [fbi.gov] a year were not violent crimes, but in fact totally legal consensual sex. You are one sick puppy.
Re:Prison Sentences (Score:5, Insightful)
-- Or Bernie Madoff, who stole BILLIONS of dollars - wiping out whole families, I suppose he should just get a slap on the wrist eh?
No, he should be forced to work until he dies, paying as much as can possibly be paid back to the people he swindled. This works better than us paying 40+K a year to keep him in prison.
-- The point of prison has never been to punish the prisoner.
It may not have that effect, but the ultimate *stated* point of non-life prison sentences is punishment and deterrent.
-- The only real purpose of prison is to remove the people who harm society from the society they harm.
If this were the case there would only be life-sentences. Removing an individual from society for a few years (at a cost ~40K a year) does *provably* far more harm than good, if you're only consideration is 'getting the off the streets'. Remember, that 40k does not include the benefit of having a productive member of society in jail. And most people who end up in jail for a year or so are generally not jobless, and almost certainly aren't jobless *and* stealing/doing 40K or so worth of damage/theft per year while out of prison.
-- So repeat after me
What a disturbing phrase.
The reason our sentencing laws are so draconian is because too many people ignore them, and have never stopped to consider what would happen to their life if they spent even one week in jail on charge to which they'd been found guilty. A significant percentage of Americans would find that they'd been fired, can't get hired at a similar job, their credit has been affected, and that it's all legal. So they can't make their mortgage, can't pay their debt etc etc. Extrapolate the curve.
Prisons exist in America as they are today because we've allowed the prison industry to become profitable. The regulations now exist to serve the private prison industry, because the only industry that pays any attention to the prison system is the private prison industry. It is *NOT* that we don't have regulations in place. It is that normal Americans just aren't paying attention - as we are wont to do - and a capitalist response has filled the vacuum. I'm not against capitalism in any way, I'm just stating a fact. Also, I'm blaming 'us', the citizens who are not paying attention, not the corporations - despite the fact that I think every company I've every looked into which makes money off of prisons is disgusting.
I will admit that the advertising seen whenever a major prison bill comes up always appeals to exactly your viewpoint. The advertising paid for by the prison industry, that is.
To summarize:
Prisons and draconian sentencing laws exist because of a desire for profits.
The conditions which have allowed industry to add even more stupidly long sentencing has been, in order.
- Citizen apathy.
- A general lack of empathy in our society - we rarely attempt to 'put ourselves in their place' before making snap judgments, which we then stick to.
- Voter ignorance, combined with.
-- appeals to fear (get them off my streets!)
-- appeals to vengeance (Punish those bastards! See second point also).
-- 'not my problem', or worse
-- 'MAKE THIS not my problem'.
I specify vengeance, not punishment or 'justice'. Nobody screams 'Punish them!' unless that which they truly desire is vengeance.
It is really easy to tell if you are punishing someone or are extracting vengeance: if you feel good about it, it's vengeance. Try punishing a three year old for trying to start across a street without looking if you don't believe me.
Re:Call the cops (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Call the cops (Score:5, Insightful)
Innocent people are more likely to be flustered, etc., when confronted with allegations of a crime.
They'll act guilty, whereas the true crook will look you right in the eye and lie. He or she has nothing to lose by lying.
The old story of "liars can't look you straight in the eye" is a lie. Crooks do it all the time. An honest person would be ashamed tha people would even *think* that they did something wrong, which is why they act in ways that pop psychology says "they're acting guilty."
"No warrant, no entry. I have nothing to hide, but I do value my privacy, and you should be spending your time catching crooks, not trying to weasel around the law like a crook. Have a nice day."
Never volunteer anything to the cops (Score:4, Insightful)
If you don't have a warrant, you don't get entry.
If you want to go fishing, go fish yourself somewhere else, not on the taxpayers dime.
Fire the lawyer. No jury will convict. "Deep int he hard drive" - it is to laugh. Must have been a really old hard drive - most of them are pretty shallow nowadays.
Re:Never volunteer anything to the cops (Score:5, Informative)
He is represented by a public defender, which means he can't afford a new lawyer, and his current lawyer can't afford to put together a respectable case.
Re:Never volunteer anything to the cops (Score:5, Insightful)
Most juries are pretty smart - I was on one, and the few dumbasses among the jury candidates were all weeded out. They are made up of the average joe citizen and despite what you may think, you yourself ARE the average joe citizen. You are not a legal expert, but you are a reasonably intelligent person perfectly able to recognize most bullshit when you hear it.
Also, the requirements for conviction are note "I think you dunnit", they are things like A.)Intended to possess child porn, B.)actively sought out child porn, C.)actually did keep child porn in his position for a reasonable period of time. There may be more for child porn, but those are similar to the types of requirements for the felony theft case I sat on.
Furthermore, the judge makes it very clear that you must believe each one of those criteria beyond a reasonable doubt. That's not "I'm pretty sure it's true", that's "There is no reasonable alternative". It also applies to each one individually, 2 out of 3 doesn't cut it. It does not mean it is impossible for it to have happened differently, it just means there is no other reasonable alternative. If there IS an alternative, and it is reasonable, there is no option but to aquit. You may be certain he did it, but his guilt has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Last but certainly not least, jurors are definitely aware that, with the stroke of a pen they are sending a man to jail for years. You are influencing the future of a man's life with this action, and it is not taken lightly. Even a case where a guy might get off in 6 months with good behavior, it's still heavy.
Certainly innocent people go to jail, even with all of this. Evidence can be looked at more than one way, and sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. If the truth of what happened doesn't seem possible, the defendant is in jeopardy. But the odds are stacked against this, and are system is designed to prefer letting an innocent go free than sending a guilty man to jail.
That's why I think this guy is full of shit. If what he says is the full truth, a third grader could keep him out of prison. A lawyer, even a public defender, doesn't tell you to take a plea unless he thinks you are screwed, and he certainly wouldn't think that if all this guy did were accidentally download a kiddy porn pic. Hell if what he said were true he could go to court, plead not guilty, and just sit there the entire trial, with no representation and never saying a word and the jury would almost certainly find him not guilty.
In fact, if that deleted download were all they had against him, the Grand Jury would not have thought there was enough evidence to go to trial, and would have told the prosecuters to go pound sand.
That he is pleading guilty instead of defending himself, especially when there hasn't been a plea bargain, tells me that he is guilty as sin and just trying to mitigate the damage by playing the victim.
Re:Never volunteer anything to the cops (Score:4, Insightful)
Fire the lawyer. No jury will convict.
They almost certainly would. The prosecutor just has to make it clear that the only relevant fact is that he did download the images. It's completely irrelevant to his guilt or innocence that he immediately deleted the images. These laws leave absolutely no wiggle room with regards to intent.
Re:Never volunteer anything to the cops (Score:5, Insightful)
The true moral of the story, is quit breaking the fucking law, and if you see someone else breaking the law (like distributing child porn) fucking tell someone. Do those two things and you'll be fine unless someone decides to railroad you. Then you could be screwed, but your record will be your best defense.
In the land of many laws we are all lawbreakers.
Re:Never volunteer anything to the cops (Score:4, Informative)
The FBI is *not* there to give you legal advice, or act in your best interests. Their job is to throw your ass in jail if you possess kiddie pr0n. They will say they have no discretion.
The truth is your best defense. They admit you couldn't access it - didn't even know it was still there - then it wasn't "in his possession" - because legally in this case, possession means CONTROL OVER. The case is shit, and he'll walk. Even a dumb jury will "get it." Reconstituting the bits means that, before they were reconstituted, he didn't have them either. It's like a glass of reconstituted orange juice - until you add water, you don't have orange juice, just frozen concentrate.
Re:Never volunteer anything to the cops (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, when there's secret laws, and so many laws that lawyers have to specialize in small sections of the law, and still get it wrong, it's impossible to be a law-abiding citizen.
Re:Never volunteer anything to the cops (Score:5, Insightful)
The true moral of the story, is quit breaking the fucking law, and if you see someone else breaking the law (like distributing child porn) fucking tell someone. Do those two things and you'll be fine unless someone decides to railroad you. Then you could be screwed, but your record will be your best defense.
The problem is that we have so many laws, and even the most innocent thing can bring down the law. We had a case here with a roadside coffee stand on a farm. The law says you can operate a concession incidental to the farming use. Well, the way the economy tanked, the farm quit making any money. In the meantime, the coffee shop is still selling lattes, and pretty soon, it's the major money maker for these folks. OOOOPS! Here comes the law, they have a "nonconforming business use" and have to get laywers to keep from getting fined, shut down, have liens put on their property, all because their farm income went into the crapper.
Another case: A guy builds a model railroad, one of those that you can ride on, where the cars are about 12" high. He gives rides to neighbors and such. OOOPS! The state comes down on him for having an illegal amusement park. All because he wanted to share his hobby with his friends. And they actually made him dismantle the whole thing.
So, do you have any hobbies? Any side income? Do you do anything at all? Then you're probably breaking the law.
Re:Call the cops (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary states that if you accidentally download kiddie porn you need to call the cops asap. Typically, people who are guilty or trying to hide something don't call the cops on themselves.
Yes but the summary also states that accidentally downloading child porn will get you 22 years in prison.
No thank you, I will not be calling the cops to have myself sent to prison for 22 years for not doing anything wrong.
Re:Call the cops (Score:5, Insightful)
The law makes no distinction if the child porn you possess was obtained accidentally or intentionally.
Its just like buying a used car from a drug dealer and going across a border checkpoint.. The sniffing dogs smell some dope that got stashed underneath the seat and YOU are the one who gets put in prison.
I'm not a libertarian but even I can see how utterly broke and immoral the system has become to get to such a point.
Calling the cops is a complete gamble. The cops will likely say "you have child porn, I am required to arrest you and charge you with possession, you can explain it to the judge".
Best thing to do is a low-level multi-pass format, or a new HD. But that is if you *know* that you downloaded CP. If you don't know, cops may bust down your door some months later, seize your computer, then charge you once they find a thumbnail in some cache folder that was deleted 4 months ago.
Re:Call the cops (Score:5, Informative)
"Its just like buying a used car from a drug dealer and going across a border checkpoint.."
You can have your local K-9 unit run the dog through any car you buy if you ask nicely. The military will do so too, and when I was in the USAF I
had them do one car I bought as a precaution.
Call the FBI? (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah, I can see that one working out well...
Re:Call the FBI? (Score:5, Insightful)
First, they're going to take your computer and scour it with a fine tooth comb. Anything else that's illegal, they're going to nail you for. Got any other porn? Let's hope it's all GILF porn, because if somebody even *looks* that they might be under 18, they're going to try to nail you with it. Even if it's deleted. Perhaps *especially* if it's deleted. And they may try to nail you with your normal porn -- after all, it could be obscene. Got any emails where a friend mentions smoking a joint? Now they have cause to harass him.
And that assumes that they believe that it was an accident that you downloaded this. If they don't believe you, they'll nail you, and use your confession against you. (Yes, it's a confession. You also consented to their search.)
Even if they believe you and don't find anything else, you may never get your computer back. Or if you do, the drive may be wiped bit by bit -- after all, they can't give you the child porn back.
Seems to me the best thing to do is to delete it with something that overwrites every bit, like shred. And move on with your life. If the police do show up down the road, ask for their search warrant. If they don't have one, send them away. In any case, don't answer *any* questions beyond your name until you've talked to your lawyer. "Were you using your computer the night of Jan 12th?" "Um, I have nothing to say to you until I've spoken with my lawyer".
And if they do show up, get a lawyer. And if Matthew White's public defender is suggesting that he plead guilty (and there's not more to the story), MATTHEW WHITE NEEDS TO GET A BETTER LAWYER! Put himself into debt for years if he has to, but it's far better than getting convicted for this crap.
Public Defender (Score:5, Insightful)
Matt is pleading guilty on the advice of his public defender in hopes of getting a three and a half year sentence.
In other words, he doesn't have the money to actually fight this.
Re:Public Defender (Score:5, Insightful)
Matt is pleading guilty on the advice of his public defender in hopes of getting a three and a half year sentence.
In other words, he doesn't have the money to actually fight this.
Many public defenders are lawyers called upon by the courts and they're not making the billable hours they need by doing it. So, the quicker they get rid of the case the more apt they are to get back to business.
Regardless of what happens now. The kid's life is over. His name is all over the place and employers who do any sort of background check will find this.
He will have to spend the rest of his life on some sort of public aid. He may become a bitter angry person that cannot contribute to society even if he wants to contribute. What a goddamn waste.
Public defenders almost always do this. (Score:4, Informative)
"Matt is pleading guilty on the advice of his public defender in hopes of getting a three and a half year sentence."
In other words, he doesn't have the money to actually fight this.
... where by "he" you mean the PD himself.
Look, public defenders almost *always* encourage their clients to settle, because their compensation structure incentivizes them that way. PDs barely make ends meet, and they get compensated by the number of cases they take on, with very little marginal compensation for taking a case to trial. So they wind up taking on 50, 100 cases at a time. The faster they can get rid of you, the faster they can take on another case.
Notice that the merits of your case didn't appear in the above reasoning chain.
Of course if the client insists on going to trial, the PD is legally obliged to do so--but how many criminal defendants know enough AND have the cojones to argue with their lawyer when their liberty is at stake?
The PD compensation system is b0rkd, and innocent people are in jail because of it.
Re:Public defenders almost always do this. (Score:4, Insightful)
So let ordinary citizens defend people who can't afford lawyers and who are getting screwed over by public defenders.
If you have the legal right to represent yourself even though you're not a lawyer, why don't you have the legal right to have another non-lawyer who you have more confidence in represent you?
I've gone up against experienced lawyers (including the government 3 times) at least half a dozen times - I've won every time. From my experience, most lawyers don't even know all that much law. They just know how to draft and file motions with the right words, and how to navigate the court system. It's not that hard, there are already too many lawyers, and we need to get these blood-sucking ticks out of the legal system if we want justice instead of "the law."
Re:Public Defender (Score:5, Informative)
The trojans cannot be deleted. They cannot be seen, even if the user has full administrative access including the ability to see and modify hidden and system files. The trojans may be found accidentally when a wipe on a hitherto unknown file fails. The trojans run on Windows.
tl;dr - Don't run Windows if you need horrific pornography to get your rocks off. And no, the above did not happen to me.
Bad Ideas (Score:5, Insightful)
DO NOT CALL THE AUTHORITIES
Worst idea ever. If you actually have undeleted CP on your computer you will get 20 years.
The only safe thing to do is destroy the hard drive.
No (Score:3, Informative)
Why wouldn't a jury believe you had no intention of downloading kiddie porn when you were the one who reported it to the cops? Calling the cops sends it up the line to who you got it from.
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? Because the prosecutor and judge will tell the jury that the law makes no distinction between accidental possession and intentional possession.
Although the jury has the legal right of nullification, the judge and prosecutor will tell them that "this is what the law says you have to do" and the jury will convict, thinking they HAVE to.
Re:No (Score:5, Informative)
You can't expect thought on the subject. You can't expect a rational examination of the arguments, actions or context. People are stupid enough to begin with; when you bring this subject into the fold any trace of intelligence completely disappears.
Re:Bad Ideas (Score:5, Informative)
I was thinking the same thing.
I remember that story a few weeks ago... Someone found a shotgun in their back garden (this is the UK) and called the local police station to tell them he is bringing it in. Well anyway long story short because it was loaded and the box also had ammo he ended up getting a minimum of I believe three years.
Yet another story, this time from the US.... Someone finds Meth, attempts to turn it into the police... Gets hit with possession of drugs. This anecdote was on a cops-like show no less.
So too bad for us that common sense fails so often even in a legal system that is designed to have "common sense" designed into it at at least three levels (Police, Prosecutors Office, and Judge). They love to use the excuse that they enforce the laws as written (when in reality laws are meant to be interpreted so exactly this kind of thing doesn't happen!).
Re:Bad Ideas (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/Man-hid-39found39-gun-in.5883631.jp [northamptonchron.co.uk] (sic) appears to be the story.
He claims to have found the gun and ammunition whilst preparing his brothers garden for a party. He apparently then says he hid the gun at home "intending to hand it to police later".
The guy was then arrested on suspicion of aggravated burglary (which I think is burglary where he acted violently against a person) and the police found the gun .. then this story came out.
If it's a different story you're referring to can you cite a reference.
Tip: if you find a shotgun and ammunition don't touch it, stand there and call the police. If you don't have a phone then get someone to call the police for you or have a trusted person watch the weapon whilst you go to get the police. Moving the item is probably going to disturb evidence.
Re:Bad Ideas (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really.
In the UK possession of a firearm is a crime. He found a shotgun, held on to it for 24 hours, called the police but didn't tell them what he was bringing in, took public transportation with a loaded shotgun, showed up at the station, and plonked an illegal weapon on the front desk. He was an idiot and he will probably face some jail time for his ineptitude. He should have left the crime scene undisturbed and called the police. The UK police have dealt with other situations and even had citizens take possession of firearms when they were in dangerous locations ( playground ) and there were no charges in those cases.
Re:Bad Ideas (Score:4, Interesting)
As you said, the guy brought the gun in, and got arrested. This is the story:
Ex-soldier faces jail for handing in gun
http://www.thisissurreytoday.co.uk/news/Ex-soldier-faces-jail-handing-gun/article-1509082-detail/article.html [thisissurreytoday.co.uk]
Don't plead guilty (Score:5, Insightful)
Should always maintain your innocence in these type of cases because the guilty plea will haunt you the rest of your life. 3.5 years is still ridiculous.
Re:Don't plead guilty (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh and the advice of going to the FBI is stupid. Don't talk to the police!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc [youtube.com]
Re:Don't plead guilty (Score:5, Insightful)
You are assuming you would get a sane jury, and not one like:
Prosecutor: "Is it true the FBI found child porn pictures on your computer?"
You: "*Deleted* pictures"
Prosecutor: "And you admit downloading these files via Limewire"
You: "By *accident*"
Prosecutor: "I rest my case"
Jury: "He admitted downloading child porn, where's the nearest tree to hang him?"
Judge: "You can only give him 20 years in prison"
Jury: *grumble* "Well, 20 years it is then"
Seems like one of the most dangerous things you could possibly do in the US these days is search for something like "sex" on P2P and just set the whole bunch to download. I mean clearly anyone who'd do that is so perverted they deserve life in prison.
He's screwed NOW (Score:4, Interesting)
He will never get employment and maybe he will even get killed by a vigilante who knows the kid is guilty.
And for those of you named Mathew White, you're going to have to deal with it too on some level - people like to jump to conclusions.
This is were the Internet shows its evil side.
Re:He's screwed NOW (Score:5, Insightful)
This is were the Internet shows its evil side.
There was no internet in 1692.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials [wikipedia.org]
No, this is where HUMANITY shows its evil side.
the real lesson (Score:5, Informative)
If the FBI shows up at your door and asks to search your computer, the correct answer is 'No.'
If they could have gotten a warrant (Score:4, Insightful)
They wouldn't have asked. Asking first is stupid because it could tip off the suspect that they were under investigation and they'd then have time to destroy evidence and such.
So that they asked means they either realized they had insufficient evidence to get a warrant, or they'd already tried to get one and the judge said "No, you are fishing and I'm not signing off on it."
The police do things like this, try to go search when they lack the evidence to get a warrant. Many people are cooperative so it works well. Happened to a friend of mine. His roommate at the time was a problem many ways, and ended up getting himself arrested. However the police thought my friend might be involved as well. So they came back and said they wanted to search the house. My friend told them to get lost, which annoyed them, but there was nothing they could do. They didn't have any probable cause that he was doing anything illegal, they'd never get a warrant, but they could ask and if he said yes they were free to go.
It is amazing how often tricks like that work. A county attorney I know says he loves lineups. Reason? Because he asks the question "Would the guy who did it please raise his hand?" and people do! He's gotten the same person with that on more than one occasion. If crooks are willing to make it easy for the police to get them, well expect the police to take advantage.
So if you've done nothing wrong and the police come and ask to search your house, your answer should be "No, come back with a warrant." That'll most likely be the last you see of them, they wouldn't have asked if they had probable cause for a warrant. Remember: The 4th amendment is made for protecting innocent people. If we could rely on the police to be a perfectly noble and just group who would only ever search criminals, well then we'd not need a 4th amendment. It isn't there to protect criminals. However we can't thus we have one to protect innocent people from being harassed and inconvenienced.
From the article: (Score:3, Funny)
"One day, you're going to get a knock on the door and have your child taken away for many years," he said.
No one sees any problem with letting German existentialists design our laws until things like this start to happen.
Good job Kafka!
Asshole.....
Don't Talk to Police (Score:5, Informative)
It happens (Score:3, Interesting)
Spammers on a worksafe imageboard I occasionally visit sometimes upload it to the place. I report it to the board's administrator via IRC....which is logged... and purge private history. It is such an easy thing to have happen. Hell, a google search with safesearch off can do it.
This is 'won't somebody please think of the children' gone way to far.
And the public defender encouraging him to plead guilty? That lawyer should be fired for incompetance. How can someone be guilty of a crime they never had any intention of committing, and took active steps to actually avoid committing it?
I mean... I've bought second-hand HDD's that have been zeroe'd and formatted. Could I be potentially liable if the previous owner had been a kiddie-porn freako? The images might still be buried deep in the disk after all.
self-incrimination (Score:5, Insightful)
'The FBI could not comment on this specific case, but said if child pornography is ever downloaded accidentally, the user needs to call authorities immediately.'
At which point you've just confessed to trafficking in child porn. No, the proper thing to do is have a secure file deletion utility to nuke all evidence on your system.
Re:self-incrimination (Score:4, Interesting)
'The FBI could not comment on this specific case, but said if child pornography is ever downloaded accidentally, the user needs to call authorities immediately.'
At which point you've just confessed to trafficking in child porn. No, the proper thing to do is have a secure file deletion utility to nuke all evidence on your system.
No. Just buy a new hard drive and destroy the old one. Open the old hard drive and use a sawsall to cut the disks in to little pieces and scatter them.
Re:self-incrimination (Score:5, Funny)
Insanity (Score:5, Insightful)
Child porn has just become way too much of a boogeyman these days. Even if he had downloaded the images to look at - what harm would it have caused? He didn't ruin some girls life by looking at pictures that already exist.
Personally, just to get around stupid cases like this, I'd say that simple POSSESSION of child pornography shouldn't even be illegal. The point is the harm done to the actual children. By that token PRODUCTION should be illegal as that's when the harm is done. BUYING it (through cash or barter) should also be illegal as it finances production of more material. Other than that? Having a picture or video on your hard drive hurts no one, and it isn't going to turn someone into a stark raving mad child molester anymore than playing GTA turns them into a murderer.
If simple possession were not against the law then every one of these borderline gray area cases like this would go away.
Re:Devil's Advocate (Score:5, Insightful)
This "theory" has pretty similar validity to that of the "phlogiston theory".
If it were true, images of all kinds would promote all sorts of other behaviours. Vanilla porn would cause wide-spread rape. Images of murder, warfare, terrorism etc (all which appear hourly on TV and are watched by hundreds of millions of people) would lead to daily rampages of thousands of axe wielding murderers running through the streets of any country with large cable TV reach like, say, Canada. Murderers competing with thousands of bomb-totting terrorists, followed shortly by whole armies of home-grown para-military-militias fighting each other ... and on and on.
The truth is much simpler: as someone pointed out on this thread, "fighting" child molestation is a sure-fire short-cut to political power as mentioning it has the apparent effect of completely disabling higher brain functions in majority of the populace, and its no different than any other drummed-up bogeyman of the days past used for this purpose by truly evil charlatans, like fifth-column Communists, witches, demonic possession etc and so on.
Total bullshit. Children age and become adults and the simple fact is that human brain's facilities for facial recognition are insufficient to maintain recognition without any other circumstantial links (research shows that we recognize our old acquaintances based on other cues such as a series of contextual memories across time). This is why police has to use computers to "age" photos of children gone missing for more than a few years - people simply cannot recognize them. And if you cannot be recognized, any claims of "compounded harm" are simply a result of suggestions of the "holy warriors" and "therapists" whose business is to ensure that any and all claims are suitably exaggerated, logic and empirical evidence be damned.
Honest question: watching pictures is wrong? (Score:3, Insightful)
Please someone answer me as honestly as they can: even if that guy happened to willingly watch child porn images, what damage does that do to society? Obviously exploiting children to take those pictures is a bad thing. Yet, we are talking about a random person who never harmed or abused a child. He even downloaded them from a P2P network, which means that he didn't indirectly supported harming children by financing it. How will society improve itself if the justice system throws that man in jail for yeas to come? What is there to be gained? // Posted anonymously to avoid all that social stigma that is promptly associated with those that question society's knee jerk reaction regarding child pornography.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I would think that it is more important to find the perverts that produce this crap and throw the bookcase at them. Arresting someone just because they happen to have kiddie porn on their computer without considering HOW it got there (they could have been HACKED) is a misscarrage of justice. Just wait till some congressmen gets caught in a such a bind (maybe the Chinese or the Iranians hacked his computer) and the NY Times gets hold of the story.
FBI bait? (Score:4, Interesting)
If so, the good luck explaining your way out of that.
Re:FBI bait? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:FBI bait? (Score:4, Informative)
Another victim in the war on child porn (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Another victim in the war on child porn (Score:4, Funny)
Even better - what about turning around the MAFIAA's arguments. Since he didn't pay for the download, he clearly damaged the revenue stream of the kiddie porn peddlers. They should give him a medal!
I think the right move would be... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I think the right move would be... (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely.
If you're innocent and your lawyer says "cop a plea" your next words should always be "you're fired". Same with any plea bargain. Don't even consider it. You don't know what society is going to be like in 20 years - maybe that innocent plea bargain will make you eligible for compulsory military service or organ donation. Stranger things have happened.
Oblig. (Score:3, Funny)
Appalling (Score:5, Insightful)
This is shocking and appalling and must stop. This sort of thing makes it impossible to be able to even look at webpages on the net. What if one accidentily clicks on a link without knowing what it goes to and ends up with these files in their web browser cache? Clicking on a link is not enough to show intent, we cannot go on a wild witch hunt where everyone is assumed guilty until proven innocent. Under the law, it is the act of taking pictures of children in a sexually suggestive way is what should be considered illegal. For some time it has been argued that those who were purchasing such material were helping to contribute to this. However, an accidental download of such a thing does not contribute in any material way to it whatsoever and in most cases, such as we see here, is completely accidental. There are serious problems with this. This is like arresting a person for seeing a blank sheet of paper on a sidewalk, picking it up and noticing that on the other side there was child porn, since they had simply picked it up and held it. The notion is so outrageous and this is exactly what is going on here. This has nothing to do about protecting children and these prosecutions are not protecting children. That is NOT what this dragnet is about. They are NOT protecting children but they are attacking and destroying the lives of completely innocent people. In fact, many childrens lives have already been destroyed because they took a picture of themselves and simply had the picture on their cell phone. This is about thought control and precrime, because by accidentily downloading this, no one anywhere has been harmed, all it is a copy of bits. Really, this massive abuse of the law needs to stop.
The FBI is lying. (Score:4, Insightful)
There is NO requirement to "call the authorities". Delete it, preferably with a file shredder that opens up the file, overwrites each block with random bytes, closes the file, flushes the cache, THEN deletes the file. "Nothing to see here." Their "l33t toolz" (which are really just some perl scripts) won't recover it.
do the math (Score:5, Informative)
Do the math. What's the most popular porn? Girls as close to 18 as possible. Combine that with user submitted porn. Combine that with typical porn viewing habits, i.e. way too much. Now do some stats. Who's leftover that doesn't have something illegal in their cache? No one who looks at lots of porn, that's for sure. Face it. If someone doesn't like you, they can mess your life up financially, politically, emotionally, really anything they fell like if they are malicious.
Wow is this scary (Score:3, Interesting)
The tapping of the tubes is complete (Score:5, Interesting)
What this speaks -- loudly and clearly -- to me is that the national tapping of any and all communication lines is complete. And, when things are slow and the FBI can't find a terrorist cell or -power group to take down, they troll their logs, and look to hang someone that no one would defend.
I'm sure that both the EFF and the ACLU will jump in here any minute now...
It just makes the case for using cryptography in everything you do online. I don't know how far it goes though. It may be that they finally laid off Zimmerman because they have enough horsepower to break anything that bubbles up to the surface as potentially interesting.
My $.02 (Score:5, Informative)
Matt White's attorney probably had no choice but to take the plea and dispose of the case quickly. The system is designed so that the PDs can't take anything to trial on account of the sheer volume of cases they have to manage; they're forced to plead everything out and pray they get a good deal. (If they took even a small fraction of their cases to trial, their other clients would be waiting for years to have their cases heard, and there's this pesky little piece of paper that guarantees people the right to a speedy trial. (Of course, it also guarantees the right to effective counsel, but the bar for what constitutes "effective" is ridiculously low.)
It's a win-win for the people who matter: the DA gets to scratch another kill mark into his desk, the prison system gets another warm body it can use to justify its budget, the politicians who depend on prisons to keep the headcounts in their districts high get another "constituent" who can't vote, plus they get to claim they're "tough on crime" and are "protecting the children".
The fact that an (arguably) innocent man has his life ruined as a result doesn't even factor into the equation. He and the public defender are pawns. It's not that the $ystem hates them, it's that, to the people who run the show, they truly, truly do not matter.
So the moral of the story is: if you accidentally download CP, pull the plug on the computer, rip out the hard drive, and destroy it immediately. (Okay, maybe you can leave it powered up for the time it takes to back up your documents, &c., but no longer. It's hammer time.)
He Should Argue (Score:5, Interesting)
If so we should be thanking this man for harming the supporters of child pornography. Even if it was unintentional and immediately deleted.
Now I am going to destroy any credibility I had by quoting Captain Jean-Luc Picard. "I don't know how to communicate this, or even if it is possible. But the question of justice has concerned me greatly of late. And I say to any creature who may be listening, there can be no justice so long as laws are absolute. Even life itself is an exercise in exceptions. "
I like the Neal Stephenson solution.... (Score:4, Insightful)
As much as I think child porn is bad (including possession), I think US law, for better or for worse, is built upon giving individual rights to protect themselves from self-incrimination, otherwise the legal system can run amok - as evidenced by this case (if we choose to believe the guy).
So I kinda like the Neal Stephenson approach of having a strong magnetic field in the door frame wipe any drive passing through it. Surely in this day and age of portable electronics it may cause some issues, but not unresolvable ones ;-)
Where do they keep finding 12 morons? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have to assume this guy is not guilty, not because of the presumption of innocence, but rather by the lack of accessible cp on his computer. Pedophiles don't just quit cold turkey, and even if he is a pedophile, quit cold turkey (doesn't happen), hey great, he's fixed his problem on his own. Going with that:
Where does the government keep finding 12 morons to vote guilty in the jury box? I know this particular guy's case isn't going to a jury, but his lawyer seems to think he's screwed if he does. With easy to explain facts like this, both the DA (who wouldn't bring charges that would hurt his win %) and defense thinks there is a high likely hood of conviction? Are you kidding me?
And how many CRAZY guilty verdicts have we read about? Why are juries stacked with idiots too stupid to see that they could just as likely be in the defendant's seat for a multitude of offenses?
Quick side story: *all numbers, except age are fudged to prevent recrimination* I'm 32 (so far so good on my plan to outlive Jesus) and have been on a Jury 1 time. It was a drug charge, which I kinda figured out during jury selection based on the questions I was asked, so I shaped my answers accordingly. It ended up being a trial of a 19 year old kid found with 5 marijuana plants in a "grow box" (nice setup, bought online for like 2k, could of built his own for 800). The prosecution presented their case, the defense only called the defendant, who swore up and down that they were only for personal use (we're not in a medical marijuana state), and the defendant pretty much begged for mercy. I swear at this point one of my co-juror's started to tear up. Final arguments came and went, and then the Judge, the last arbiter of law said (paraphrasing here) that we were only to determine if he possessed the plants, and if so, to find him guilty.
We got back to the jury room and as I'm told we're not supposed to do, but always gets done regardless, we took a vote. 11-1. IANAL but I believed without knowing that if I gave my real reason for not wanting to convict that I'd be replaced (we had 2 alternates). I've never had to choose my wording so carefully, meanwhile the rest of the Jury kept saying things like : "the judge said we had to vote guilty" and "It doesn't matter if I think he did anything wrong, the judge said he did wrong" (that last one, I SWEAR TO GOD, was uttered word for word, i will never forget a syllable). It took 2 hours of carefully worded analogies to sway 1 other to my side, from there we got to 3 in 10 minutes, at 4, the whole room switched. Let me say that again, at 4 ppl, the remaining 8 switched over, not out of a sense of civic duty, but because they were tired and wanted to go home. WITH A MAN'S LIFE IN THE BALANCE.
When we returned our verdict, the judge didn't look at what the foreman wrote (he opened it, looked at its general direction and refolded it), when the foreman not guilty, the Judge damn near fell out of his chair, the DA did a real life triple take, and the defense attorney looked like a deer in headlights. The point is that all 3 professionals INCLUDING the defense attorney, were shocked that the jury failed to rubber stamp guilty on this guy.
After we were relieved 4 of the other jurors came to me and admitted thru conversation that they smoked pot and didn't want to vote guilty at all, but thought they had to because the judge had told them to. As they were talking, all I could think was, "So this is how democracy ends, with sheep"
Re:Where do they keep finding 12 morons? (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting - it sounds like what the judge did was correct - he instructed the jury on what the law was, that is that possession of the drug made the defendant guilty. What came out of the jury room was jury nullification (nullification of the law), that is the jury declared innocence despite the law. Supposedly this is quite a rare event.
There is a long history of jury nullification, some of it quite ugly during periods where racial discrimination was the way things were.
This one of the most controversial areas of law, and an area that all citizens who go to serve on juries should be aware of because it WONT be brought up in the courtroom. However the roots of it go very deep into English Common Law, and because the court cannot punish the jury for its verdicts and we have protection against double jeopardy, jury nullification is in fact a power of any jury.
Re:Where do they keep finding 12 morons? (Score:4, Informative)
Interesting tale of jury nullification.
I think the fact that the average jury is generally considered to consists of 12 people who were not smart enough to get out of jury duty to be the real problem. Then combined with the fact that the jury selection process is generally designed to weed out anybody with any level of technical expertise that might be able to contradict an expert witness, and the system is clearly broken.
I know for a fact that if I am every on a jury, the other jurors will hate me. I will insist on being the foreman, and work from there. Except in the case of jury nullification, the process will then proceed by looking at the jury instructions to determine the facts in dispute.
Choosing the order carefully such that the minimum number of facts need to be considered, and for each fact we will determine the truth and the level of uncertainty. A guilt verdict will be rendered if and only if there is a sequence of facts found true beyond reasonable doubt such that these facts indicate that the person is indeed guilty.
If necessary combined facts will be considered. For example there might be a reasonable level of doubt about facts A and B, but it might be clear beyond a reasonable doubt that at least one of the two is true. If it is the case that either being true may allow for a guilt verdict then such a combined fact may be considered. The final result will be a list of all facts that we have found to be true or false beyond a reasonable doubt in the course of attempting to find a path a facts that lead to guilt, or show that no such path exists.
Very organized, very methodical, would drive the average apathetic jury nuts if there are a significant number of possible facts to consider.
Of course, determining if the rest of the jury is at all sympathetic to jury nullification should probably come before of all that, as in that case, a less rigidly logical, and more emotional approach to determine if there is a good reason to ignore the law may be needed or desirable.
Re:Where do they keep finding 12 morons? (Score:5, Informative)
"The primary function of the independent juror is not, as many think, to dispense punishment to fellow citizens accused of breaking various laws, but rather to protect fellow citizens from tyrannical abuses of power by government. The Constitution guarantees you the right to trial by jury. This means that government must bring its case before a jury of The People if government wants to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property. Jurors can say no to government tyranny by refusing to convict."
You can KILL someone with this... (Score:5, Interesting)
...Imagine someone hating someone else (yes - that happens)
that someone gets an idea based on White's misfortune:
1) Send some kiddie porn images (or just family pictures of naked kids) to someone you hate
2) Do it repeatedly a few times, just to make sure they land on his harddisk
3) Secretly tip the Feds that he downloads child porn or has an interest in naked kids
The feds seizes his harddisk, he says someone anonymous sent it to him, but it doesn't help him - because it could be a child porn ring - which he "perhaps" is a part of, and they found them deleted on his harddisk. He's basically screwed! You just killed a man.
Why take chances at all?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just get a new HD. Why risk _everything_ when you can be in the free and clear for a very well spent $100 and a few hours re-install. You think that guy wouldn't pay $10,000 now to make all his troubles disappear??
It's the unforgivable crime. If that stuff winds up on your drive, smash it, then toss it, and get a new one. Tell whoever that the HD died and you need a new one. Even if you have to put it on a charge card or borrow the money. Don't even mess around with shredders or wipe programs. Why take any chance at all??
Win,Win,Win (Score:5, Insightful)
What a victory for the tax payer. First we have the thrill of supporting some lard assed FBI personnel. Then we have the joy of paying for a trial as well as the prosecutor's time. And then for the next wonderful thrill we get to pay a huge sum to put this poor guy in prison! And then we get the absolute joy have having him on a sex offenders' list so that he will not be employable or able to get housing for the rest of his life which will trigger welfare and public support until the poor schmuck is dead.
So the guy gets his entire life trashed and the public gets a whopping expense. With a logic stream such as this one the people behind this kind of law should have been in charge of the war in Vietnam. Entire new definitions of victory abound!
Re:Used drives (Score:4, Informative)
"I just wonder if i should ever buy/use a used HD again ?!?"
DBAN it for a few days if that worries you. Electricity is cheap.
http://www.dban.org/download [dban.org]