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ACLU Wins, No Sexting Charges For NJ Teens
Following up on the "sexting" case we've discussed in recent days, oliphaunt sends word from the Times-Tribune that a New Jersey federal judge has ordered the prosecutor not to file charges in the cases of three teenage girls whose cell phones were confiscated. "Wyoming [NJ] County District Attorney George Skumanick Jr. cannot charge three teenage girls who appeared in photographs seminude traded by classmates last year, a judge ruled Monday. US District Judge James M. Munley granted a request by the American Civil Liberties Union to temporarily stop Mr. Skumanick from filing felony charges against the Tunkhannock Area School District students."
This actually happened to me when I was a high-school student... Back before the internet crash, when you could get domain names for free, a friend of mine wanted to put a website up of his balls, just his balls, at jasonsballs.com (made-up first name). He was 16 and I was 17. I registered the site and drew up the html, with jasonsballs.com in big red letter, a single gif of his ballsack, and an angelfire counter. A few days later and a coupl e thousand hits later, I'm in the administrative office at my highschool with the police. They asked me about it and I explained what we had done (mistake of course). After a bit of time both of us were charged with "Pandering Obscenity of a Minor" or some such charge, a 5th degree felony. After months of lawyers talking, we finally had a court date. 5 minutes in, when an actual judge saw the case, he dismissed it immediately. Nevermind the thousands of dollars in attorney's fees that we had to pay.
I had an idea to call the ACLU at that time but thought that media exposure might hurt me in the long run, now I regret not calling them.
Anyway, this seems like a similar situation and hopefully competent decisions like this will continue to be made.