Posted on 05/29/2008 9:30:35 AM PDT by PercivalWalks
Criminal defense attorney Douglas R. Slain (pictured) has a great post about an outrageous misuse of child pornography laws. The target, of course, is male--in this case Alex Phillips, a 17-year old high school student from La Crosse, Wisconsin. Slain writes:
"Phillips may not be the brightest crayon in the box, but his story is one that once again calls into question the legislative sanity of some of the overreach of our laws regarding what constitutes 'child pornography.'
"It turns out that Phillips at some point in the last year was friendly with a 16-year old girl called HLK (14 months his junior) who sent him two explicit photos of her completely naked in different positions. She took the photos with her cell phone camera and sent them to his email address. Phillips, apparently miffed that HLK had started seeing someone else recently, decided to post the photos (with lewd captions) to his MySpace account."
I condemn Phillips' vindictive spurned lover routine, but authorities went way, way overboard here. Phillips is being charged with two felonies--possession of child pornography and sexual exploitation of a child under 18 years of age. Both of these are wildly inappropriate for the situation. (He's also being charged with misdemanor defamation, which I think is fair.)
The Phillips case is another example of law enforcement using laws designed to entrap adults who are exploiting children as a way of punishing/jailing teen boys. Child pornography laws are supposed to target adult men exploiting 9-year-old children. They aren't supposed to target teen lovers.
Similarly, statutory rape laws--whose purpose is to prevent 30-year-old men from having sex with 15-year-old girls--are increasingly being used to target teen boys who have sex with girls who are in similar age brackets. One good example can be found here.
Read more about Alex Phillips here.
Glenn Sacks, www.GlennSacks.com
[Note: If you or someone you love is faced with a divorce or needs help with child custody, child support, false accusations, Parental Alienation, or other family law or criminal law matters, ask Glenn for help by clicking here.]
Uh, this guy is way wrong. He posted pornographic pictures of a girl he knew was underaged on-line. Doesn’t matter that she sent them, he distributed them, he is going to hang.
I agree that the boy should be punished, but I disagree with you on how harsh the punishment should be. Hanging a child would be an extreme reaction. I agree with the author that laws designed to protect children from adults should not be applied wholesale to teenage boys and the fact that the crime was committed by a teenage boy should be taken into consideration when weighing the extenuating circumstance of the crime.
A few years of being gang sodomized in prison ought to teach him, eh?
This was in the news last week and the article said that he had been asked to take the photos off the website and refused. The only way they could get him to take them down was to charge him with a crime. He asked for it and he got it. I have no sympathy for the little creep.
Since when is nudity equivalent to pornography? THINK: It is neither necessary, nor sufficient.
Posted along with lewd comments. Probably makes it porn.
Fine, she took the pictures, i.e. manufactured the child pornography, and she emailed them to him, i.e. distributed child pornography, she should share a cell with him since you’re being all high and mighty about it eh???? Or are our laws only meant to be applied arbitrarily and capriciously????
Mr. Sacks doesn’t get to define what child pornography is, the law does that and the 17 yr. old acted as an adult when he insisted on breaking that law.
To him I apply my tag line.
Cheers!
Or are our laws only meant to be applied arbitrarily and capriciously????
seems as though that is how it is done anymore depending on the new young d.a. that wants to make a name for himself....commonsense these days doesn’t exist as we see and hear everyday in the news...
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