Digitally altered porn defendant plans First Amendment defense

[mongo]

Digitally altered porn defendant plans First Amendment defense
By RUSS CHOMA
Union Leader Correspondent

MILFORD — The attorney for a Massachusetts man accused of possessing pornographic images of two 15-year-old campers at an Amherst summer camp said he is prepared to argue that the pictures being labeled as child pornography are protected under the First Amendment.

On July 4, Amherst police arrested Marshall Zidel, 59, of 10 Cross St., Somerville, Mass., after staff at Camp Young Judea discovered at least seven digital images with the faces of two campers superimposed on the bodies of naked women. In several of the photos, the two campers, who attended Young Judea during the summer of 2004, were shown in sexually explicit poses.

<snip>

The unsealed affidavit also describes how Zidel readily admitted to Amherst police that he had digitally placed the faces of the two 15-year-old campers onto other bodies for his own "personal fantasy." According to the affidavit, Zidel also told police that the pictures were "fakes" and were not "out there" on the Internet.

Behzad Mirhashem, an attorney with the Manchester Public Defender's office who is representing Zidel, said that at the upcoming probable cause hearing he plans to argue that the charges should be dropped on the grounds that the pictures are protected by the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech.

more - http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showfast.html?article=58068

[omega minimo]

1. Isn't it more like

Free Creeps?

:hi:

[mongo]

2. I'm not defending the defendant's actions

but the truth of the matter is that he is being prosecuted for a thought crime.

His defense is sound. The portions of the COPA that the Supreme Court overturned included verbiage that would have decriminalized any depictions of sexual expression between characters under the age of 18, regardless of the age of the performers. It would have made the movie The Blue Lagoon, and others child pornography prosecutable under the law.

I guess the real question here - regardless of how we may feel about defendants mental state, is do we really want to prosecute someone for what is basically a thought crime? He did not disseminate these pictures, and no actual children were harmed in these pictures.

If you kept a private journal, in which you wrote about problems with your spouse, and included the comment "I'd like to kill that asshole", should you be prosecuted for conspiracy to commit murder?

[omega minimo]

3. Apparently that's what The Founders had in mind

The freedom to be a slimeball :woohoo:

:woohoo::woohoo:
:sarcasm:

[mongo]

4. I suppose you think that Stalin had a better plan

We just kill anyone that who is ideologically impure?

[omega minimo]

5. Do people fall for that?

Change the subject and project assumptions? Set up arguments and assume any response takes the opposite side?

Apparently the defense is that he is free to be a slimeball.

[mongo]

6. Well yes, he is free to be a slimeball

sorry I assumed that you have a problem with that.

[omega minimo]

7. Sorry you assume

anything