Because of the potential for selective or punitive prosecution I'm in favour of legalising teen sexting. Obviously the law needs to be carefully drafted to avoid allowing child exploitation, but it should absolutely not be possible to prosecute normal sexually-active teens under child pornography statutes. “Trust us, we'd never use it against the people it's supposed to protect” isn't enough.
> “Trust us, we'd never use it against the people it's supposed to protect” isn't enough.
Especially because it's been so horribly abused in the past. Take this case in Manassas, Virginia. 17 year old texts a picture of his penis to his 15 year old girlfriend. The police find out, charge the 17 year old with distributing child pornography, and take pictures of his penis saying they need it for evidence[1]. They then get a warrant from the courts demanding that the 17 year old send them a picture of his erect penis[2]. And if he didn't comply:
> If he doesn't cooperate, the Manassas City Police Department has threatened to take him to a hospital and medically induce an erection with an injection, attorney Jessica Harbeson Foster toldThe Washington Post.
Eventually they backed off when it received widespread attention in the press. Later it turned out that the detective in charge of the case was a pedophile[3]:
> A Manassas City police detective, who was the lead investigator in a controversial teen “sexting” case last year, shot and killed himself outside his home Tuesday morning as police tried to arrest him for allegedly molesting two boys he met while coaching youth hockey in Prince William County.
When I read stories like this, I'm at a loss for words. No one in the justice system realized how terrible this is? Not only does this show the problem with giving law enforcement this kind of power, but I think it shows that we really need some sort of public advocacy department to monitor and go after this sort of abuse (someone to watch the watchmen).
No victim means no crime. (Morally, I'm using the word "crime" here to refer to a moral crime.) But it also means that the prosecution of such non-crimes is itself a crime, meaning the "guilty" party here is the victim and everyone involved in their prosecution, up to and including the supreme court, is criminal.
I'm not in favor of that at all. Neither I am favor of throwing the adult book meant for serious predators at kids messing around (which happens now in other areas and it really shouldn't).
What I am in favor of is a different set of rules for minors self distributing. Possibly deferred adjudication and counseling first offense, ramping up from there. It is behavior that could cause trouble for the kid and possibly for others, can't just say "have at it!". But neither should it make one a registered sex offender with all that baggage.
>“Trust us, we'd never use it against the people it's supposed to protect” isn't enough.
The correct answer to this is always "Since legislation is freeform and you're writing it now anyway, maybe you should write that it should never be used that way into the legislation".
Also, there's the possibility of poor children with Android phones getting convicted while rich children with locked iPhones go free because they're more costly to investigate.
So, child porn is legal as long as both parties are involved? That doesn't work either. All you will wind up doing is having people magically always have only two people involved. And "teen sexting" isn't even uniform: a 10-year-old sexting a 16-year-old is generally a problem while a 17-year-old sexting an 18-year-old likely isn't.
Your opponents in kiddie porn are two different sets of people: 1) the egregiously stupid, generally teenagers, who may or may not be malicious about it and 2) the horrifically competent and malicious who WILL find a way to exploit any loophole.
Group 2 is what makes child pornography laws so problematic. Anything you do to strengthen your ability to get Group 2 generally increases the collateral damage in Group 1.
This is exactly what "prosecutorial discretion" is supposed to be used for. Unfortunately, it seems that "prosecutorial discretion" is now mostly "scoring poltical points for election."
I'll be the bad guy here and say that these laws should all just go away. It is just too convenient to plant "evidence" be it alcohol, drugs, or this.
The idea that minors cannot consent is correct. Children are not a scaled small version of adults. They need to develop not just grow physically and children are vulnerable. We need to protect vulnerable members of our society. However, like with so many things in life, we've gone too far though. We need to scale back this stupidity be it "for the children" or "terrorism" or "drugs are bad".
There's a quote about doing the same thing and expecting different results which I can't remember off the top of my head but to me all of this: including the drama against marriage and abortion feels like bread and circus to get people occupied with silliness.
> There's a quote about doing the same thing and expecting different results...
It's the definition of insanity.
The abortion topic is interesting because we're talking about how we socially define a human life in a realm where science can't help at all (or at least has failed to give a concrete answer thus far). If it was an accepted truth that human life begins at conception, then abortion is murder. Even our laws reflect that at a certain stage prior to a baby exiting the uterus the thing is, for all intents and peuposes, alive. I actually think using fuzzy privacy prose to defend the right to terminate something that may or may not be conscious or "human" is really a stretch.
I'm definitely leery of any law that attributes strict liability to mere possession, rather than requiring the authorities to prove that something was obtained with intent or knowingly stored in an unsafe way. It might as well be engineered to enable busting "inconvenient" people by planting evidence.
What is the rationale behind defining child porn age < 18? I think most would agree there is a profound difference between a 23 year old dating a 17 year old and a 50 year old having anything sexual to do with an 8 year old. There are worlds of moral difference here.
The first case is something that actually happened to a friend of mine. He was 23 and dating a 17 year old, got convicted, sent to prison, and is now labeled a sex offender for life.
Are there any countries out there that take a sane approach to this moral conundrum?
"Most jurisdictions have set a fixed age of consent" but also
"Some jurisdictions have laws explicitly allowing sexual acts with minors under the age of consent if their partner is close in age to them."
> He was 23 and dating a 17 year old, got convicted, sent to prison, and is now labeled a sex offender for life.
What third-world country would send someone to prison for dating a 17 year old? I doubt even Iran or some other theocracy would do that. Where was this?
My friend's grandfather was 21 and his grandmother was 15 when they first started dating. Needless to say if laws were as crazy back then as they are now my friend wouldn't exist as his grandfather would have been on a registry and in prison instead of starting a family and a 60 year long marriage.
The weirdest thing is that we deem people as legal adults at 18.
If you look at neurological science, crime rates, and even car insurance rates then it's fairly easy to see that the brain has not fully matured by age 18 in most people.
Sure, a person's capacity for logic/reason has matured but usually that happens around 15 anyway. Inhibition of risky behavior and thus the ability to make sound decisions definitely has not.
A more sane legal adult age would probably be around 25 but then how would we justify enlisting legal 'children' in the military?
> What is the rationale behind defining child porn age < 18?
The most widely ratified human rights convention, the UNCRC, defines a child as someone under 18.
While the US doesn't ratify those conventions (because constitution) they do try to put them into law. That means they enact a mish-mash of bits and pieces, and leave out quite a lot.
England does a reasonable job here. We have the law (The Sexual Offences Act 2003 covers photographs of children), and we have prosecution advice (which covers things like whether it's in the "public interest" to prosecute.) The sexual offences act has some protections for people who are over 18 but who have a vulnerability impdeding choice (eg, a learning disability) or who are in a weird power dynamic (eg university lecturers).
There are also differences in law between someone under 13 (where it's assumed the alleged offender knew they were under age) and someone between 13 and 16/18 where the crown has to prove the alleged offender knew they were under age.
English law is a bit complicated because the age of consent for sexual activity is 16. It is weird that you can fuck a 17 year old, but you can't have naked photos of that same person. There's a narrow exemption in law for possessing images for people who are under 18 and married.
It's mostly just "18+" is considered an adult for almost all legal purposes.
California has some sanity about "statutory rape", which is what your friend almost certainly got nailed on. The number of years under 18 as well as the age difference can be taken into account, and that conviction could be reduced to a different misdemeanor. However, you need a GOOD lawyer to pull this off.
> What is the rationale behind defining child porn age < 18?
You are conflating two concepts that aren't relevant.
1) Dating and age of sexual consent have nothing to do with the legal rationale behind child pornography prohibitions.
2) Depictions of nudity of subjects under 18 do not run afoul of child pornography prohibitions (of course, contingent on if you can afford your rights all the way past appeals court)
The age in 2) is typically standardized by the federal government, and they just let people consent to contracts to exploit themselves at the age they can consent to any other contract.
> What is the rationale behind defining child porn age < 18?
This is actually known (as to the USA). When the law was passed, pornography producers didn't have to keep records of their models. The goal of setting the legal threshold at 18 was to make it really, really easy to convince a jury that a model who was e.g. 12 was below the legal threshold. It wasn't expected that photos of 16-year-olds would be prevented, because if all you're going on is a photo, they aren't easy to distinguish from 18-year-olds.
The rationale is the age of majority. As a parent, I have a right to control the influences in my daughter's life - save for some exceptions around mandatory education and maintaining basic health. That means whom she associates with, and how images of her taken are used save for those taken of her while in public and not under duress of compulsion. Why is that so hard to understand?
When I was in law school I worked on a Florida legislative project to bring forward a version of Romeo & Juliet laws to Florida [1]. For example there are cases where 17 year old girls become registered sex offenders for life due to relationships with their 16 year old boyfriends (whom they have married in some cases). These types of cases have made it to the SCOTUS. Challenging on the grounds of cruel and unusual punishment and double jeopardy, and upheld by the court.
It goes without saying civil and criminal child abuse, neglect, and abondonment cases are as difficult as any to stomach. But there are famous case of parents with "bathtub" framed photos of their kids on their hallway walls and grandfathers with pictures of their grandchilds running through sprinklers, and as you might imagine they were painted as the devil incarnate.
Our law clinic was very aware the issues of text messaging even then, 2006. At the time we used the Socratic method to debate the logic and human aspects of charging the young children guilty of originating "sext messages" of themselves. My position was always that such a law would chill the indemnity a victim needs to come forward.
One of the major issues is that many of these crimes are under the strict liability [2] standard meaning if the pictures exist, the defendant is guilty,
notwithstanding their intent.
The idea that it is constitutional to charge someone with a felony for taking a picture of their own body is absurd. The judges were just too chicken to strike the entire statute. Actually, my apologies, that's unfair to the chicken.
Let me add - transmitting a photo of your genitals to someone uninvited is pretty awful, and should be illegal for a completely different reason.
So no mistake about this guy. The bigger question is if it was intended to be received by the adult, are they both guilty? Or just the adult at that point?
It seems to me the biggest hinge with this case is that the recipient didn't want the pic and actually called the cops herself.
Would be much more satisfying if they would have charged and proven that he assaulted the woman and just stuck with that.
The courts are saying there must be a legislative fix. What's the chance they actually fix it?
This is a symptom of how I think Republicans and many neoliberal Democrats have basically reduced our government to systematically stop recognizing compassion as a function. All that is left is possession (property rights), and punishment (criminal enforcement). Charity and compassion are seen as some exotic thing that tend to belong in the personal sphere, not something that is a government function in society.
What other things that you can do to yourself are illegal? Suicide. Abortion in some places. What if I cut a piece of my body and eat it, is that cannibalism?
"the Court found the prohibition of images that appear to be, but are not actually, minors improper; any harm stemming from those false images “does not necessarily follow from the speech, but depends upon some unquantified potential for subsequent criminal acts.”"
Washington SC: "He claims any potential harm in his case is just as attenuated and vague as Free Speech Coalition. Because no harm was done, he should have the same right as any adult to take voluntary photographs of his own body. We do not find this argument persuasive."
Am I correct in reading this as the court basically saying "The defendant presents a solid argument. We don't care." ??
Implying that Snapchat is mostly for sexting is doing a disservice to the platform, isn't it? In my experience (which is just an anecdote, idk if there are stats on this) Snapchat has been ~95% showing dumb jokes to friends
Since almost all of us agree that sexual preference is something that is innate, we cannot consciously affect it significantly, isn't it wrong to prosecute pedophiles? IMO, these people should be treated with pity, not as criminals. If we do that, all these absurdities will disappear automatically.
Of course, coercion is still illegal, and coercion of a minor would carry higher criminal penalties. But distribution of content does not automatically imply coercion or violence.
But sentencing somebody to prison for looking at cp is akin to sending gay people to prison.
I could easily see 30 days in jail being a traumatic experience that could ruins someone's life, especially if jails are as violent as often portrait.
It's a complete miscarriage of justice: throwing a minor in jail, using a law supposedly created to protect minors. It could only be more cynical if they tried them as an adult–I didn't check, for fear of what I may discover.
> He claims any potential harm in his case is just as attenuated and vague as Free Speech Coalition. Because no harm was done, he should have the same right as any adult to take voluntary photographs of his own body. We do not find this argument persuasive.
Given how persuasive this argument is, I am a bit surprised that the court was not persuaded. I understand that Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition has some distinguishing factors, like the fact that the depictions in question were clearly distinguishable from records of a crime (on account of them not being photographic images of actual minors).
This is a messy and complicated business, it seems like there needs to be a legislative solution since the supreme court can not find what most people consider a just outcome in an interpretation of the statute.
Didn't Ron/Rand Paul have a proposed bill to limit punitive action on structural crimes (crimes committed structurally due to them being under age): this, alcohol in possession of minor, curfew violations, ... ?
The title of the piece is a bit click-baity, as the court opinion specifically states, as the article notes in its last paragraph, that “because [Gray] was not a minor sending sexually explicit images to another consenting minor, we decline to analyze such a situation.” The title is stated as a fact, wherein it is really the columnist's opinion: "I think that — given the logic of the majority opinion — the analysis would have to ... "
as a parent and also someone who was a child at one time I can see that kids make all kinds of mistakes. I mean, I seriously don't even ask why sometimes because I know the answer I'm going to get will not make any sense.
I'm very lucky and I have some wonderful children I cannot see them going out and doing something like this however people do stupid things. I don't think charging someone with something that is going to stick with them for the rest of their life for something that they did when they were 13 ,14, 17 years old.. they are kids and their brains, hello all you scientists out of there, are not even fully developed.
Listen, if a 17-year-old child sent an explicit image to my daughter I would be over at the parents house faster than you can imagine. That kid obviously needs a swift kick in the ass, he or she does not deserve to be charged with a crime will follow that person for life.
If we continue to charge children as adults, kids that are 13,14,15 or 17, then we might as well change the age of when you are an adult to 13 years old.
has anyone given any consideration to the crap that these kids are bombarded with on a moment by moment basis on television in music and all entertainment, it is hyper sexualized. What do you expect your children to do when they are faced with this?
The sad situation and I don't agree with the stupid thing that this kid did in the stupid things the kids are going to do but they are kids! Come on now, haven't we seen cases recently where adult pedophiles have been let off? Are we going mad?
[+] [-] TazeTSchnitzel|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Chathamization|8 years ago|reply
Especially because it's been so horribly abused in the past. Take this case in Manassas, Virginia. 17 year old texts a picture of his penis to his 15 year old girlfriend. The police find out, charge the 17 year old with distributing child pornography, and take pictures of his penis saying they need it for evidence[1]. They then get a warrant from the courts demanding that the 17 year old send them a picture of his erect penis[2]. And if he didn't comply:
> If he doesn't cooperate, the Manassas City Police Department has threatened to take him to a hospital and medically induce an erection with an injection, attorney Jessica Harbeson Foster toldThe Washington Post.
Eventually they backed off when it received widespread attention in the press. Later it turned out that the detective in charge of the case was a pedophile[3]:
> A Manassas City police detective, who was the lead investigator in a controversial teen “sexting” case last year, shot and killed himself outside his home Tuesday morning as police tried to arrest him for allegedly molesting two boys he met while coaching youth hockey in Prince William County.
When I read stories like this, I'm at a loss for words. No one in the justice system realized how terrible this is? Not only does this show the problem with giving law enforcement this kind of power, but I think it shows that we really need some sort of public advocacy department to monitor and go after this sort of abuse (someone to watch the watchmen).
The kid in the case got probation, by the way.
[1] http://time.com/2971033/virginia-police-search-warrant-photo... [2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/09/virgin... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/manassas-...
[+] [-] rothbardrand|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mythrwy|8 years ago|reply
What I am in favor of is a different set of rules for minors self distributing. Possibly deferred adjudication and counseling first offense, ramping up from there. It is behavior that could cause trouble for the kid and possibly for others, can't just say "have at it!". But neither should it make one a registered sex offender with all that baggage.
[+] [-] Sir_Substance|8 years ago|reply
The correct answer to this is always "Since legislation is freeform and you're writing it now anyway, maybe you should write that it should never be used that way into the legislation".
[+] [-] aiyodev|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsder|8 years ago|reply
Your opponents in kiddie porn are two different sets of people: 1) the egregiously stupid, generally teenagers, who may or may not be malicious about it and 2) the horrifically competent and malicious who WILL find a way to exploit any loophole.
Group 2 is what makes child pornography laws so problematic. Anything you do to strengthen your ability to get Group 2 generally increases the collateral damage in Group 1.
This is exactly what "prosecutorial discretion" is supposed to be used for. Unfortunately, it seems that "prosecutorial discretion" is now mostly "scoring poltical points for election."
[+] [-] thanksgiving|8 years ago|reply
The idea that minors cannot consent is correct. Children are not a scaled small version of adults. They need to develop not just grow physically and children are vulnerable. We need to protect vulnerable members of our society. However, like with so many things in life, we've gone too far though. We need to scale back this stupidity be it "for the children" or "terrorism" or "drugs are bad".
There's a quote about doing the same thing and expecting different results which I can't remember off the top of my head but to me all of this: including the drama against marriage and abortion feels like bread and circus to get people occupied with silliness.
[+] [-] jliptzin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dcow|8 years ago|reply
It's the definition of insanity.
The abortion topic is interesting because we're talking about how we socially define a human life in a realm where science can't help at all (or at least has failed to give a concrete answer thus far). If it was an accepted truth that human life begins at conception, then abortion is murder. Even our laws reflect that at a certain stage prior to a baby exiting the uterus the thing is, for all intents and peuposes, alive. I actually think using fuzzy privacy prose to defend the right to terminate something that may or may not be conscious or "human" is really a stretch.
Anyway for all the other stuff I agree: insane.
[+] [-] 0xcde4c3db|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jfaucett|8 years ago|reply
The first case is something that actually happened to a friend of mine. He was 23 and dating a 17 year old, got convicted, sent to prison, and is now labeled a sex offender for life.
Are there any countries out there that take a sane approach to this moral conundrum?
[+] [-] sgustard|8 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent
"Most jurisdictions have set a fixed age of consent" but also "Some jurisdictions have laws explicitly allowing sexual acts with minors under the age of consent if their partner is close in age to them."
[+] [-] userbinator|8 years ago|reply
...or even a 17.997-year-old.
The problem is that the world is mostly continuous, not discrete, but laws try to be the latter.
[+] [-] StavrosK|8 years ago|reply
What third-world country would send someone to prison for dating a 17 year old? I doubt even Iran or some other theocracy would do that. Where was this?
[+] [-] Avshalom|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jliptzin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mabbo|8 years ago|reply
Most of the rest of the world actually.
[+] [-] Brybry|8 years ago|reply
If you look at neurological science, crime rates, and even car insurance rates then it's fairly easy to see that the brain has not fully matured by age 18 in most people.
Sure, a person's capacity for logic/reason has matured but usually that happens around 15 anyway. Inhibition of risky behavior and thus the ability to make sound decisions definitely has not.
A more sane legal adult age would probably be around 25 but then how would we justify enlisting legal 'children' in the military?
[+] [-] DanBC|8 years ago|reply
The most widely ratified human rights convention, the UNCRC, defines a child as someone under 18.
While the US doesn't ratify those conventions (because constitution) they do try to put them into law. That means they enact a mish-mash of bits and pieces, and leave out quite a lot.
England does a reasonable job here. We have the law (The Sexual Offences Act 2003 covers photographs of children), and we have prosecution advice (which covers things like whether it's in the "public interest" to prosecute.) The sexual offences act has some protections for people who are over 18 but who have a vulnerability impdeding choice (eg, a learning disability) or who are in a weird power dynamic (eg university lecturers).
There are also differences in law between someone under 13 (where it's assumed the alleged offender knew they were under age) and someone between 13 and 16/18 where the crown has to prove the alleged offender knew they were under age.
English law is a bit complicated because the age of consent for sexual activity is 16. It is weird that you can fuck a 17 year old, but you can't have naked photos of that same person. There's a narrow exemption in law for possessing images for people who are under 18 and married.
Here's the sexual offences act: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/contents
Here's the Crown Prosecution Service guidance: http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/p_to_r/rape_and_sexual_offences/...
[+] [-] bsder|8 years ago|reply
California has some sanity about "statutory rape", which is what your friend almost certainly got nailed on. The number of years under 18 as well as the age difference can be taken into account, and that conviction could be reduced to a different misdemeanor. However, you need a GOOD lawyer to pull this off.
[+] [-] ringaroundthetx|8 years ago|reply
You are conflating two concepts that aren't relevant.
1) Dating and age of sexual consent have nothing to do with the legal rationale behind child pornography prohibitions.
2) Depictions of nudity of subjects under 18 do not run afoul of child pornography prohibitions (of course, contingent on if you can afford your rights all the way past appeals court)
The age in 2) is typically standardized by the federal government, and they just let people consent to contracts to exploit themselves at the age they can consent to any other contract.
[+] [-] coldtea|8 years ago|reply
Almost all of them? Heck, 23-17? I don't even see the conundrum at all.
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|8 years ago|reply
This is actually known (as to the USA). When the law was passed, pornography producers didn't have to keep records of their models. The goal of setting the legal threshold at 18 was to make it really, really easy to convince a jury that a model who was e.g. 12 was below the legal threshold. It wasn't expected that photos of 16-year-olds would be prevented, because if all you're going on is a photo, they aren't easy to distinguish from 18-year-olds.
[+] [-] lr4444lr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] will_brown|8 years ago|reply
It goes without saying civil and criminal child abuse, neglect, and abondonment cases are as difficult as any to stomach. But there are famous case of parents with "bathtub" framed photos of their kids on their hallway walls and grandfathers with pictures of their grandchilds running through sprinklers, and as you might imagine they were painted as the devil incarnate.
Our law clinic was very aware the issues of text messaging even then, 2006. At the time we used the Socratic method to debate the logic and human aspects of charging the young children guilty of originating "sext messages" of themselves. My position was always that such a law would chill the indemnity a victim needs to come forward.
One of the major issues is that many of these crimes are under the strict liability [2] standard meaning if the pictures exist, the defendant is guilty, notwithstanding their intent.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_rape#Romeo_and_Jul...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_liability
[+] [-] zaroth|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zaroth|8 years ago|reply
So no mistake about this guy. The bigger question is if it was intended to be received by the adult, are they both guilty? Or just the adult at that point?
It seems to me the biggest hinge with this case is that the recipient didn't want the pic and actually called the cops herself.
Would be much more satisfying if they would have charged and proven that he assaulted the woman and just stuck with that.
The courts are saying there must be a legislative fix. What's the chance they actually fix it?
[+] [-] aiyodev|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dv_dt|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 21|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pharrington|8 years ago|reply
Washington SC: "He claims any potential harm in his case is just as attenuated and vague as Free Speech Coalition. Because no harm was done, he should have the same right as any adult to take voluntary photographs of his own body. We do not find this argument persuasive."
Am I correct in reading this as the court basically saying "The defendant presents a solid argument. We don't care." ??
[+] [-] odammit|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heartles|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ringaroundthetx|8 years ago|reply
fortunately most people don't report it
minefield out there
also, stop sending dick pics to women
[+] [-] quuquuquu|8 years ago|reply
Congrats, two 17 year olds sending pictures of themselves consentually = child porn.
What I also couldn't understand from the article:
A picture of someone who is an adult, but is /pretending/ to be a minor is also child pornography?
What?!
Pornhub.com will need to take a hard look at some of its content providers then.
Or does it not apply to Montreal based companies?
What if the servers are in the US? What if the client is in the US?
Lunacy.
[+] [-] dingo_bat|8 years ago|reply
Of course, coercion is still illegal, and coercion of a minor would carry higher criminal penalties. But distribution of content does not automatically imply coercion or violence.
But sentencing somebody to prison for looking at cp is akin to sending gay people to prison.
[+] [-] ikeboy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] readams|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gozur88|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matt4077|8 years ago|reply
It's a complete miscarriage of justice: throwing a minor in jail, using a law supposedly created to protect minors. It could only be more cynical if they tried them as an adult–I didn't check, for fear of what I may discover.
[+] [-] TheSpiceIsLife|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] microcolonel|8 years ago|reply
Given how persuasive this argument is, I am a bit surprised that the court was not persuaded. I understand that Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition has some distinguishing factors, like the fact that the depictions in question were clearly distinguishable from records of a crime (on account of them not being photographic images of actual minors).
This is a messy and complicated business, it seems like there needs to be a legislative solution since the supreme court can not find what most people consider a just outcome in an interpretation of the statute.
[+] [-] crb002|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] c3534l|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WCityMike|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pgnas|8 years ago|reply
I'm very lucky and I have some wonderful children I cannot see them going out and doing something like this however people do stupid things. I don't think charging someone with something that is going to stick with them for the rest of their life for something that they did when they were 13 ,14, 17 years old.. they are kids and their brains, hello all you scientists out of there, are not even fully developed.
Listen, if a 17-year-old child sent an explicit image to my daughter I would be over at the parents house faster than you can imagine. That kid obviously needs a swift kick in the ass, he or she does not deserve to be charged with a crime will follow that person for life.
If we continue to charge children as adults, kids that are 13,14,15 or 17, then we might as well change the age of when you are an adult to 13 years old.
has anyone given any consideration to the crap that these kids are bombarded with on a moment by moment basis on television in music and all entertainment, it is hyper sexualized. What do you expect your children to do when they are faced with this?
The sad situation and I don't agree with the stupid thing that this kid did in the stupid things the kids are going to do but they are kids! Come on now, haven't we seen cases recently where adult pedophiles have been let off? Are we going mad?
[+] [-] lisper|8 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15255290
[+] [-] myrandomcomment|8 years ago|reply