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Porn Found On L.A. Obscenity Case Judge's Website
Stanislav_J writes "In a bizarre revelation, the judge who is presiding over the Isaacs obscenity trial in Los Angeles was found to have sexually explicit material on a publicly-accessible website. Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, acknowledged that he had posted the materials, but says he believed the site to be for personal storage only, and not accessible to the public (though he does acknowledge sharing some of the material with friends). The files included images of masturbation, public sex, contortionist sex, a transsexual striptease, a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows, and a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal. The latter two are especially ironic in that the trial involves the distribution of allegedly obscene sexual fetish videos depicting bestiality, among other things, by Ira Isaacs, an L.A. filmmaker."
Stanislav_J continues:
"The judge has blocked public access to the site (putting up a graphic that reads, 'Ain't nothin' here — y'all best be movin' on, compadre').
Isaacs' defense had welcomed the assignment of Kozinski to the case because of his long record of defending the First Amendment, but the startling news about his website (the revelation of which seems to have been interestingly timed to coincide with today's scheduled opening arguments) now have many folks calling for him to be removed from the case. There is no indication that any of the images on Kozinski's site would be considered obscene or illegal. But certainly, one has to believe that most would consider this at the very least to represent a serious conflict of interest given the nature of the trial."
Isaacs' defense had welcomed the assignment of Kozinski to the case because of his long record of defending the First Amendment, but the startling news about his website (the revelation of which seems to have been interestingly timed to coincide with today's scheduled opening arguments) now have many folks calling for him to be removed from the case. There is no indication that any of the images on Kozinski's site would be considered obscene or illegal. But certainly, one has to believe that most would consider this at the very least to represent a serious conflict of interest given the nature of the trial."
I bet the reaction of the community would be much more drastic if
"his long record of defending the First Amendment" was not mentioned.
Where is the irony? I do not see it. Porn-loving judge defends "first amendment". I would call it "integrity".
The wolf was appointed to herd the sheep. Call me back when man bites dog.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
What better way to become a better judge of obscenity than to immerse yourself in relevant material. Makes sense to me in an admittedly warped way.
- Toby
I don't know. Pornography is not illegal. I'm not sure there's any reason to treat the material the judge possessed as any different from a .PDF of Lady Chatterley's Lover or Ulysses.
If the models are all of legal age, then the worst thing you can really accuse him of is copyright infringement.
Uhm, I think you are forgetting the part about where he did nothing illegal.
Was the content viewable by minors? Did it have age verification before showing said content?
Well then...
Contributing to the delinquency of minors, and whatever statutes cover providing pornography to minors as well.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Nothing from the site was illegal however. (aside from possible copyright infringement if he didn't have the rights to distribute the photos, which I don't think was your idea of illegal)
Should a judge also recuse himself from presiding over auto theft cases if he should happen like cars?
Does liking porn predispose him to favoring the defendant in an illegal porn case? More importantly, does it do so to a greater degree than being a defender of the First Amendment?
Good luck finding a judge who can truthfully say they have never had any interest in pornography.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
The ninth circuit is about to lose a defender of free speech because he had the savvy to run a web site but not enough to know how it really works. His collection of "porn" are things that other people sent him, the kind of crap that clogs email systems everywhere. It is impossible to have an email address and not have it sent to you. Someone you know will send it along. His mistake was putting it where it could be seen by the same kinds of fanatics that are pushing the "war on porn" in the first place. Ignore the fact that they routinely get busted like Jimmy Swaggart did. Kozinski thought people would not find it because there was no link to the directory ... ugh! He's exactly the kind of level headed person the courts need to rule fairly on these kinds of cases.
Like the fine article quotes him saying:
Those were fine sentiments when he was appointed by Ronald Reagan, but it's bad news under a regime that wants to be above the law. There you will find your animals, those who want to live by tooth and claw.
Assumptions and Conjecture don't mean he did anything wrong. A common exercise in law classes is to take a situation and state all the laws that could have been broken.
IE: A guy is walking down a street.
Well really the example doesn't lend itself to any laws being broken but here are the responses you'd get anyways.
1 - Maybe he is walking IN the street in which case he is Jaywalking
2 - He also might be obstructing traffic
3 - If he isn't wearing any clothes then he might be arrested for public indecency
I could go on but I won't.
I fail to see where the conflict of interest is here. So he likes porn. Yeah, he's MALE.
What would be the 'right' judge to preside over this case? A known prude who prays to God at least seven times a week and has publically stated that pornography is a sin?
So he has a life outside the court room. Big fucking deal. There's no money involved in it for him, I'm sure, and he probably doesn't know the defendant either. Where is the conflict of interest?!
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
A couple of lawyer buddies of mine tell me that they are coached in law school to take anything from the 9th Circuit Court with many grains of salt. That may be the most overturned legal entity on the planet. So a foolish pervert is the chief judge. Huh. What do you know?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The mind of a censor is best described in the following joke/anecdote.
Every day, Joe, a construction worker, would walk to his job singing dirty songs. Mrs. Williams finally got fed up and complained to the police about Joe's singing. They told Joe to cut out the singing. The next day, Mrs. Williams complained again. They asked Joe, and he had stopped singing. So they asked her what the problem was. "He's whistling dirty songs now."
Cynical Idealist
I bet 100% of the material on the website is the same material that moves around the "have you seen this" emails forwarded on by every unknowing idiot new to the Internet. I recognize the description of the animal video as the one where the drunk guy is trying to get away from the donkey that is trying to mount him. I also know the woman wearing the cow body paint circulated in a similar email. The vague descriptions on the others also sound as if they are the same type of material that gets forwarded around. I wouldn't be surprised if every adult who has ever used the Internet has seen the material in question, that the judge has some online storage with the material in question isn't surprising to me, and certainly not a reason to dismiss him from the case.
At the bare minimum I would suggest the material in question makes him much more applicable to judge a case involving bestiality because he should be able to recognize the difference between protected speech and images (those emails classify as such) and obscene material.
I don't get how a government can even try to 'standardize' on something like sex. Isn't that what's so great about sex, that it's *not* like a lunch line, where everyone gets the same food? Variety is the spice of life.
P.S. Before you judge my own sexual desires and fetishes, I ask you to let it go and ask yourself if it's even necessary. It's not my point to try and "legalize" beastiality or anything of the sort - I just think it's kind of lame to try and tell someone what is "ok" sexually, and what isn't (as long as nobody/nothing gets hurt or is forced to do something against their will - that's a completely different story). It reminds me of the "old days" when certain sex positions were illegal.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
The case itself would provide a precedence for the judge's own defense in his ensuing criminal public obscenity trial.
Where does the article even imply the judge is going to be criminally prosecuted for the content that was on his website? From the description, the content on his site may be seen as embarrassing and in poor taste, but you have to do far more than post nudie pictures your site to be brought up on obscenity charges.
By your logic, a judge who drinks and enjoys alcoholic beverages must recuse himself from a DUI trial because of conflict of interest.
Remember ignorance is not a valid excuse for breaking the law.
IANAL... but that said, AFAIK:
Ignorance *of the law* is not a valid excuse for breaking it. I doubt he was ignorant of the law. Ignorance of the ramifications of your actions is a variety of excuse. It still leaves you open to anything that is negligence related (I won't even try to speculate as to his potential degree of exposure in that realm). A very large number of statutes have the words 'knowingly and willingly' or other words to that effect in them. He's off the hook for any of those.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
I mostly agree, except for judges as moral compasses. Morals and laws are very different things.
Laws are meant to prevent a person from infringing another person's rights. Morals are meant to tell a person what's right or wrong. The confusion comes from all the situations where the two overlap, such as murder, rape, robbery, and fraud.
I would expect a judge to be lawful. I wouldn't necessarily expect them to agree with my morals.
Maybe not
Almost anyone can be gotten for a felony on a daily basis for nearly any action or inaction.
We have IIRC over 40,000 Federal felony statutes, and hundreds of thousands of regulations. Combine that with prosecutors and cops who take an "expansive view" of the definitions of the words in the code and someone committed a felony last night in their sleep.
No, why would he have to recuse himself?
One could make the argument that a judge that refused to ever look at porn in their life is equally biased and should recuse themselves.
If anything, I think this makes him more likely to be able to be impartial.
http://notanumber.net/
So, I see that not one amongst our libertarian crowd has yet taken you to task for your kmee-jerk 'think of the blinkin' children' response. Perhaps because they know better than to feed the stinkin' trolls. Regardless, I'm just dumb enough to bite.
Here goes: Are you frackin' stupid? It's illegal to show someone speeding? Or running a red light? It's illegal to show OJ failing to pull over? Or to show Martha Stewart committing perjury?
Those were all 'silly' examples. More seriously, the crime in child pornography resides in the person abusing the child. It does not reside in the viewer. Next you'll tell me that I'm guilty of terrorism for having read about how to manufacture a bomb? Or guilty of illegal immigration for having learned some Spanish? Look, if a crime was committed, go after the perpetrator, not everyone to whom you can draw a line with your purple crayon.
I think he could have gotten away with it, when I first read it, my immediate assumption was that maybe he was doing some "investigating", as in seeing what exactly the material was, which I would see necissary, aslong as the material was the same material in question.
I would be very concerned if a judge decided to go conduct his own investigation of the facts in a case before him.
What?
A judge who drinks and drives, with pending charges, would not have to excuse himself from a DUI trial. He would have to excuse himself from a trial aimed at determining if DUIs were illegal. Similarly, if he was deciding where between 0.08 and 0.09 the limit should be - and he'd been caught with a limit of 0.086 - then he would have a conflict of interest.
In this case, the judge is being asked, in the courtcase, to define a similar limit about obscenity. Arguably, at least some of the images & video he's being asked to judge is tamer than material he has been discovered to posses. If he rules that they are obscene, he's making himself liable - therefore, he has an interest in ruling that they are not obscene, hence the conflict of interest.
Lawmakers can and do get away with these conflicts of interest all the time; judges are not meant to.
"Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
Why is the parent a troll, but all the other posts making the same joke are +5 funny?
Is it a market if the distribution is free, as in this case? And as for the rest, it's thought crime, entirely conjectural "may discover", etc., are what you imagine might be consequences. Exactly the same argument would lead to banning almost all news reporting.
A while ago I picked up American Psycho and read a few chapters. It turned my stomach (it's full of extreme sexual violence, in case you haven't heard of it). But while I wouldn't want my 10-year-old daughter to read it, I wouldn't want it prevented from being distributed. And despite reading about it, personally, I haven't felt the urge to cut off womens' heads and use them as masturbation toys. I really doubt you can suddenly have perverse urges switched on by being exposed to depictions of it. We'd all be in very deep shit if that were the case. By all means, punish the people who actually DO these things. The rest is just expressing your disapproval without helping anyone, the children least of all.