Here's some more screwing around with the First Amendment from our friends in the great state of Ohio. Ohio, as you may recall, brought us the Supreme Court decision permitting state laws to call anything they like "child porn," including mere nudity and mere text. It also brought us the Mapplethorpe Trial, the "Salo" gay bookstore arrest, the Larry Flynt trial, and served as the birthplace of the National Coalition Against Pornography. Now Ohio is again at the forefront of blue-nosed preoccupation with private conduct in the home. In a case the prosecutor calls a "breakthrough" in the war against child pornography, a Columbus man pleaded guilty to a single charge of pandering child pornography and got a 10 year prison sentence. His only crime was writing words in a personal journal, which he never showed to anyone, and which was discovered during a routine search of his home. Had he gone to trial and lost, he would have faced a 16 year prison sentence. The law in question makes it illegal to "create, reproduce, or publish any obscene material that has a minor as one of its participants or portrayed observers." Apparently, in Ohio, it's even illegal to write about a minor watching someone else have sex. I believe this to be the first successful US child porn prosecution for purely textual material created for private use. Civil Libertarians are, of course, unamused. I wonder how many of them have the balls to say so publicly, and risk getting labeled as supporting the sexual abuse of children. My guess is that the ACLU will keep silent on this one, and stick with defending the right of Jewish children not to be frightened by Santa. http://www.dispatch.com/news/news01/july01/755632.html ----- Brian Dalton wrote fictitious tales of sexually abusing and torturing children in his private journal, intending that no one else see them, he said. But when his probation officer found the journal during a routine search of Dalton's Columbus home, prosecutors charged him with pandering obscenity involving a minor. In Franklin County Common Pleas Court yesterday, the 22-year-old man's written words cost him 10 years in prison. The case worries civil-rights lawyer Benson Wolman, who said it has free-speech implications. "What you're saying is somebody can't, in essence, confess their fantasy into a personal journal for fear they have socially unacceptable fantasies, then ultimately they end up getting prosecuted,'' said Wolman, former director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Ohio. "This is the only case that I know of where we are talking about a journal -- just written words. It surprises and offends me that an action should be brought based on a journal.'' But Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien called the case a "breakthrough'' in the battle against child pornography. The journal came to light earlier this year when a probation officer discovered it during the search. Dalton was on probation from a 1998 pandering conviction involving photographs of child pornography. The journal contains the names and ages -- 10 and 11 -- of three children who had been placed in a cage in a basement. It details how the children were sexually molested and tortured. At first, police were concerned the accounts were real, prosecutors said. However, Dalton told authorities they were fictitious, and there was no evidence to the contrary, Assistant Prosecutor Christian Domis said. The 14-page journal was presented to a grand jury. The contents were so disturbing that jurors asked a detective to stop reading after about two pages, Domis said. "It was seriously the most disturbing thing I ever read,'' Domis said. "There was a woman on the grand jury who was crying.'' Domis said most pandering cases in Franklin County involve photographs of child pornography. "This is one of the first felony cases in Franklin County that involves the written word -- a writing somebody created on their own,'' he said. "Even without passing it on to anyone else, he committed a felony.'' The Feb. 23 indictment alleges that Dalton "did create, reproduce or publish any obscene material that has a minor as one of its participants or portrayed observers.'' Wolman said he cannot recall an obscenity case involving "mere words that were not disseminated.'' "It is just this kind of thing, I think, that is a misapplication of what the law intends,'' he said. But because Dalton pleaded guilty to the pandering charge, he cannot appeal the conviction or 10- year sentence -- seven for the pandering charge and three for violating probation. In exchange for his guilty plea, prosecutors withdrew a second pandering charge. He would have faced 16 years if convicted of both. "The law hasn't really been challenged and he would have had the opportunity to do that,'' defense attorney Isabella Dixon said. "But the cost to him is a lot of time in jail to challenge it.'' At yesterday's sentencing, Dalton told Judge Nodine Miller: "I know what I wrote was disturbing. "Over the past few months, I looked back at it and realized it was not something I could do. I don't know how I imagined to write anything like that.'' -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"