Textual "Child Porn" Conviction in Ohio
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"
On Wed, 4 Jul 2001, Eric Cordian wrote:
Here's some more screwing around with the First Amendment from our friends in the great state of Ohio.
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
'routine search'? Remind me never to go to Ohio. -- ____________________________________________________________________ Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. Ludwig Wittgenstein The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
At 2:39 PM -0700 7/4/01, Sandy Sandfort wrote:
Inchoate wrote:
'routine search'? Remind me never to go to Ohio.
It's every state of the Union. Parolees are still prisoners. Just as you can search a prisoner's cell, a parole officer can search a parolee's house.
The entire parole process is itself an open sore on our justice system. It's turned into a control system, a "force magnfication" scheme. Instead of actually having to _jail_ all of the people, they release them early, take away their key Bill of Rights protections (2nd, 4th, etc., including the vote) and have them as virtual slaves of the system. From an economic/libertarian point of view, what this has done is to alter the costs of making things criminal. Standard economic theory: making more people criminals doesn't cost much, and makes them more malleable. As so many people have said so pithily, "At the rate they're going, we'll _all_ be felons." And felons don't need no steenking constitutional rights. Were Orwell writing today, he'd probably replace his "proles" with "parolees." And the cameras in each room would merely be part of the parole process. One of the biggest concerns Keith Henson had in his probable 6-month sentence in his case (which is another issue) is that he was likely to receive a 5-year probation term, during which his house could (and likely would) be entered at any time, day or night, and during which period his private files and records would be scrutinized for any thoughtcrimes which could be used to send him back for a longer period. (Which happened with both Bell and Parker.) As a felon myself, and one who committed a dozen or so felonies each carrying 3-year terms just last week, I realize how the entire probation/parole process is what Big Brother really likes the most about our so-called justice system. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Tim May wrote:
The entire parole process is itself an open sore on our justice system.
Yes and no. I know I'd rather be on parole than in the slammer. (Of course, given the choice I'd go for "none of the above.") I have an acquaintance who just got out after being in for seven years. Even though she is required to live in a half-way house, cannot go anywhere but work nor may visit anyone without express permission of her parole officer, she's very happy to at least be out in the world and not locked up. The problem is not that parole exists--be thankful that it does. The problem is the criminalization of every area of life. S a n d y
At 3:34 PM -0700 7/4/01, Sandy Sandfort wrote:
Tim May wrote:
The entire parole process is itself an open sore on our justice system.
Yes and no. I know I'd rather be on parole than in the slammer. (Of course, given the choice I'd go for "none of the above.") I have an acquaintance who just got out after being in for seven years. Even though she is required to live in a half-way house, cannot go anywhere but work nor may visit anyone without express permission of her parole officer, she's very happy to at least be out in the world and not locked up.
The problem is not that parole exists--be thankful that it does. The problem is the criminalization of every area of life.
It's the very fact that so much probation exists that makes it economically feasible for so many behaviors to now be felonious. If residents of a local community had to actually _pay_ for the building of enough prisons to house the thoughtcriminals, there would be far fewer things classified as felonies. The parole machine _is_ what makes the criminalization of every area of life so attractive to the "it can't happen to me!" crowd. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
On Wed, 4 Jul 2001, Sandy Sandfort wrote:
The problem is not that parole exists--be thankful that it does. The problem is the criminalization of every area of life.
But just as Tim argues, the latter always involves cost-effectiveness too. All in all, constitutions should have adequate protections against black letter law and, more generally, "free" criminalization of any conduct. There should always be a sufficient, predictable cost associated with putting people away to guard against criminalization for convenience, prudence and political gain only. Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy, mailto:decoy@iki.fi, gsm: +358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front
Sandy wrote:
Yes and no. I know I'd rather be on parole than in the slammer. (Of course, given the choice I'd go for "none of the above.") I have an acquaintance who just got out after being in for seven years. Even though she is required to live in a half-way house, cannot go anywhere but work nor may visit anyone without express permission of her parole officer, she's very happy to at least be out in the world and not locked up.
The problem is not that parole exists--be thankful that it does. The problem is the criminalization of every area of life.
If everyone refused plea bargaining, and refused parole, the number of people who could be prosecuted and jailed would be a small fraction of those who are "in the system" today. Of course, no specific individual is going to volunteer to be Bubba's Bitch on principle, so the effect is that an unlimited number of people can be kept "in the system" at a cost asymptotically approaching zero as increasingly advanced monitoring technology gets mass produced. Since the only pretense a democracy can use for taking someones rights away is that they have been convicted of a crime, enough laws are made until everyone is guilty of something, and then they are selectively enforced. The first time someone annoys Big Brother, they are placed "in the system" and lose their right to be secure in their person and possessions, keep private journals, vote, work where they want, travel, own a firearm, and at no great cost to Big Brother either. "Parole" is the lubricant which makes this "democracy in name only" work effectively, and as Tim suggested, is a great force multiplier for oppressive governmental authority. Through plea bargaining, the sheep volunteer to be shorn, at no cost to Big Brother, and through parole, they voluntarily live with shorter chains and in smaller cages, for the privilege of a less painful hair removal process than sheep who protest. "Be thankful that parole exists" is not the way I would describe the above system. One should also bear in mind that in a system without parole, the government probably couldn't afford to make unimportant things illegal without bankrupting the taxpayers in the process, thus repairing your problem with the "criminalization of everyday life." It's not like Joe Sixpack is going to give up his Beernuts so we can give persons 10 year prison sentences for writing rude words in their diaries. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
On Wed, 4 Jul 2001, Eric Cordian wrote:
If everyone refused plea bargaining, and refused parole, the number of people who could be prosecuted and jailed would be a small fraction of those who are "in the system" today.
I think the relative cost of parole vs. completing the sentence is the pertinent question -- the parole system can be a wonderful thing, as Sandy says, but the government should never be able to reduce costs by using it. There should be paroles, but their cost should somehow be forced to the same level as serving the time behind bars. After that the only reason to let someone out would be the balance between the prospect of rehabilitation vs. risk taken. Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy, mailto:decoy@iki.fi, gsm: +358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front
On 5 Jul 2001, at 3:59, Sampo Syreeni wrote:
On Wed, 4 Jul 2001, Eric Cordian wrote:
If everyone refused plea bargaining, and refused parole, the number of people who could be prosecuted and jailed would be a small fraction of those who are "in the system" today.
I think the relative cost of parole vs. completing the sentence is the pertinent question -- the parole system can be a wonderful thing, as Sandy says, but the government should never be able to reduce costs by using it. There should be paroles, but their cost should somehow be forced to the same level as serving the time behind bars. After that the only reason to let someone out would be the balance between the prospect of rehabilitation vs. risk taken.
If a non-expert may interject.. while I can't judge how realistic it would be to repeal laws or to do some of the other things mentioned in this thread, it seems to me that "making parole cost less" would be defeated by the simple economics of spending x to house someone, and not spending x not to. Like I say, I'm not intimate with the details of costs of prisons or of monitoring parolees - is there more to it than that? It seems like it would be too artificial to simply add costs where there aren't any. sparkane
Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy, mailto:decoy@iki.fi, gsm: +358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front
At 1:55 PM -0700 7/4/01, Eric Cordian wrote:
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.
"During a routine search of his home." This is becoming more and more common. King George is no doubt laughing at how the foolish colonists have created a system worse than anything ever imagined during colonial days.
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.
I say so. What a person _writes_ cannot be a crime, no matter how repugnant the thoughts may be to others. That we are sending people off to prison for 10 years for fantasies written in their journals shows what kind of society we now live in. That there is not an uproar over searching a man's journals "during a routine search of his home" shows the situation is probably hopeless.
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.
Lot of Jews in the ACLU, and Jews are well-known to be censorious and hateful of liberty (Feinstein, Lieberman, Schumer, the whole qabal).
"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.
Already the case with shrinks, at least in many state. Confess a fantasy, even an absurd and non-credible fantasy, and "Tarasoff" requires the shrink to narc out his or her patient. Here in California, psychiatrists, counsellors, and family therapists are Agents of the State.
"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.''
Thoughtcrime.
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.''
"He came to realize that he _loved_ Big Brother." --Winston Smith
participants (6)
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Eric Cordian -
Jim Choate -
Sampo Syreeni -
Sandy Sandfort -
Tim May -
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