- 16 Sep 2023 19:54
#15287089
Several years ago, 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.
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.
(I can't seem to find the link to the original article to reference this, but if you can help it would much appreciated, it was from some time around 2015 or a few years before)
These types of things are not extremely uncommon. Young teenage boys do all sorts of crazy things.
This post comes from Yahoo answers:
"I saw my son watching porn of himself?
I walked into my sons room one day and I saw him jacking off to porn
At first I thought he's being a normal teenage boy but then I noticed the guy in the video was himself
What should I do "
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.
Another similar story:
A teenage boy has been prosecuted under child porn laws for having naked selfies of himself on his mobile phone.
Because it was on a mobile phone and back up copies of cell pictures are automatically stored remotely, it was prosecuted as a federal crime.
(I also see some Constitutional issues here, but that is another separate discussion)
The 17-year-old boy took a plea deal to avoid jail time, but had to register as a sex offender.
The teenager's name was C-orme-ga Cope-ning, and this took place in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
(dashes were inserted into the name to make an attempt to respect privacy, so this doesn't automatically appear in a search of the name)
article from September 2015
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-new ... hy-6483507
Seventeen-year-old C-orme-ga Cope-ning had been facing felony child pornography charges for allegedly sexually exploiting a minor -- himself. But now, as part of the plea agreement, those charge were dropped, leaving two misdemeanor counts of disseminating harmful material to minors.
Copening faced up to 10 years in prison after police say they discovered nude images of himself. He was 16 at the time he took the pictures with his then 16-year-old girlfriend.
The police discovered the photos on his cellphone while investigating an unrelated claim of sexting at his school last October.
Neither Copening nor the young woman shared the photos further, but authorities are charging the pair as adults because they are now 17.
They are charged with multiple counts of making and possessing images of their under aged 16-year-old selves, making each of them both the predator and the victim.
As part of the plea agreement they will not be allowed to have a cell phone for a year.
https://abc7.com/news/teen-facing-felon ... al/996447/
Child porn laws used against kids who photograph themselves
This week, prosecutors in Greensburg, Pennsylvania charged six teens ranging in age from 14 to 17 with creating, distributing and possessing child pornography, after three girls were found to have taken photos of themselves in the nude or partially nude and e-mailed them to friends, including three boys who are among the defendants.
17 year old charged with 2 felonies after texting pictures of himself to his girlfriend:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/j ... hy-sexting
As if his girlfriend had not already seen in person what he texted her.
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/2014/0 ... es-police/
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."
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.
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.
(I can't seem to find the link to the original article to reference this, but if you can help it would much appreciated, it was from some time around 2015 or a few years before)
These types of things are not extremely uncommon. Young teenage boys do all sorts of crazy things.
This post comes from Yahoo answers:
"I saw my son watching porn of himself?
I walked into my sons room one day and I saw him jacking off to porn
At first I thought he's being a normal teenage boy but then I noticed the guy in the video was himself
What should I do "
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.
Another similar story:
A teenage boy has been prosecuted under child porn laws for having naked selfies of himself on his mobile phone.
Because it was on a mobile phone and back up copies of cell pictures are automatically stored remotely, it was prosecuted as a federal crime.
(I also see some Constitutional issues here, but that is another separate discussion)
The 17-year-old boy took a plea deal to avoid jail time, but had to register as a sex offender.
The teenager's name was C-orme-ga Cope-ning, and this took place in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
(dashes were inserted into the name to make an attempt to respect privacy, so this doesn't automatically appear in a search of the name)
article from September 2015
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-new ... hy-6483507
Seventeen-year-old C-orme-ga Cope-ning had been facing felony child pornography charges for allegedly sexually exploiting a minor -- himself. But now, as part of the plea agreement, those charge were dropped, leaving two misdemeanor counts of disseminating harmful material to minors.
Copening faced up to 10 years in prison after police say they discovered nude images of himself. He was 16 at the time he took the pictures with his then 16-year-old girlfriend.
The police discovered the photos on his cellphone while investigating an unrelated claim of sexting at his school last October.
Neither Copening nor the young woman shared the photos further, but authorities are charging the pair as adults because they are now 17.
They are charged with multiple counts of making and possessing images of their under aged 16-year-old selves, making each of them both the predator and the victim.
As part of the plea agreement they will not be allowed to have a cell phone for a year.
https://abc7.com/news/teen-facing-felon ... al/996447/
Child porn laws used against kids who photograph themselves
This week, prosecutors in Greensburg, Pennsylvania charged six teens ranging in age from 14 to 17 with creating, distributing and possessing child pornography, after three girls were found to have taken photos of themselves in the nude or partially nude and e-mailed them to friends, including three boys who are among the defendants.
17 year old charged with 2 felonies after texting pictures of himself to his girlfriend:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/j ... hy-sexting
As if his girlfriend had not already seen in person what he texted her.
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/2014/0 ... es-police/
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."
- By Skynet
- By Rancid
- By Tainari88
- By litwin