Slashdot Mirror
"Accidental" Download Sending 22-Year-Old Man To Prison
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.'"
Absolutely ridiculous
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.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
"Oh HAI, I just downloaded some kiddie pron... by mistake of course you understand"
yeah, I can see that one working out well...
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.
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.
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.
Typically, neither do people who are innocent.
'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.
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.
In my opinion, it's irrelevant whether or not he downloaded the images on purpose. The connection between downloading an image off of limewire and the sexual abuse of a child is so tenuous it's absurd. The only way people can justify it is to make up crazy hypotheticals and market demand theories which are used in no other context.
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.
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.
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 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.
This is were the Internet shows its evil side.
There was no internet in 1692.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials
No, this is where HUMANITY shows its evil side.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
-- 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.
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!
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.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller