Maybe people are decrying the prosecutor because they think that only a fucktarded idiot of a DA would ever actually file charges like the ones in this case?
Hmmm. Hadn’t thought of that.
What, by the way, are the facts of “this case”?
I don’t know about that statement. Cite?
From http://www.greenmac.com/eagle/ISSUES/ISSUE23-9/07JuryNullification.html
And from http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/zenger/nullification.html
Slight hijack:
I believe that it is legal to buy cigs when you turn 18, at least in the US. If you substituted ‘alcohol’ you’d be correct (within the US) – the legal drinking age is 21.
That is all.
By Otto: “See, I think the problem here is that you’re assigning a single meaning to the phrase “child pornographer.” There are degrees and shades of meaning. Just like there are degrees and shades of meaning to words like “killer” and “thief.” Is she a “child pornographer” in the same way that someone kidnapping children in Denmark and forcing them to pose is a “child pornographer”? No, of course not, which is why juries don’t convict people of being labels. They convict (or acquit) them of charges.”
No, I’m not assigning a single meaning. I’m saying that the law may assign a single meaning. For example, the law may fail to recognize the difference between this situation and a child pornographer such as you described above. If that were the case, then I’d vote for acquital.
If the law does in fact recognize degrees of offence in this case, then I’d certainly listen and evaluate on that basis.
[Internet Police]
SIR! Return that gun to its holster and step away from the computer!
[/Internet Police]
Dunno about the jurisdiction in question, do know that in Michigan a person who is found guilty of a sex offense (even if they aren’t prosecuted as an adult) are still registered on the public web site. here
Can you find me a jurisdiction in the United States in which a lawyer is allowed to argue jury nullification? And I didn’t say that jury nullification didn’t happen. I said that it’s not the job of the jury to decide whether a law is good or bad. That some juries do it doesn’t mean that by definition it’s right or good or legal or the jury’s job.
IANAL. I have heard some interesting talk about jury nullification, however. If I (as a juror) discuss nullification during jury deliberations what are the consequences?
No.
However, I did find information about a group trying to educate people that nullification is something that can be done…
From: http://www.jacobgrier.com/papers/JuryNullification.htm
IAAL, and I’m confused. If this were a question on the bar exam, I would definitely say that she was not guilty of any crime. The general rule is that members of the class the law is designed to protect are not liable. This sounds like a case that’s going to get dropped before it reaches a jury.
So far as I know, she took and then posted pictures of her naked self on the Internet.
I’ve always been under the impression that ‘The People’, and specifically the victim, are represented in court by the DA or the prosecutor who attempts to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant comitted the crime that he or she is accused of having committed.
My difficulty with these charges is that the ‘victim’ in this case is also the defendant, so supposedly the prosecutor/DA is bringing charges on her (and the people’s) behalf to exact justice for the harm done to her by attempting to put the person who harmed her through some kind of legal punishment. First off, I don’t get the impression that she’s the victim of a crime, or that there was any ‘harm’ committed against her. I also wonder just exactly how the hell this will work in court, since the victims of sex crimes usually testify as to what happened, how the crime affected them, and so on during the trial.
Who’s going on the stand here? Her? Can the prosecution call her as a prosecution witness since she is supposedly the ‘victim’ of the ‘child pornographer’? Would that even be a good idea? I somehow doubt she’d sit up there with her Kleenex sobbing about how ‘the defendant’ forced her to take her clothes off for the pictures and then posted them on the Internet. If they could call her as a witness because she is the ‘victim’ of this crime, can she invoke her Fifth Amendment rights not to answer questions as the victim because she’s also the defendant and has a right not to say anything that could be used to incriminate herself? Can the defense put her on the stand to attempt to shoot down the prosecution’s theory that there is a victim of a child pornographer in this case? If she got up there and said that she doesn’t consider herself a victim of child pornography, does that make her a remorseless sex offender? Just how the hell would a trial like this even work? Call a bunch of people to say that she sent them pictures of herself naked who will not admit it on the stand because they’d incriminate themselves for receiving child pornography? Offer them immunity for possessing the pictures so they’ll testify that she sent them, but still go ahead with the prosecution of the victim^H^H^H^H^H^H defendant because clearly it’s the suppliers of ‘kiddie porn’ who have done the worse of the two crimes?
In my head I’m seeing a trial in which the only witnesses that actually testify give pretty damned clear testimony that yes, the pictures do exist, which as far as I know, nobody is disputing, and no testimony of any kind that would prove there is a victim much less that the defendant victimized anyone by taking and distributing the pictures. I’m obviously not a lawyer, just an engineer, but I’m the kind of person who gets randomly selected for jury duty and I can’t imagine how a prosecutor could get me to wrap my mind around this case in a ‘return a guilty verdict’ kind of way. It just doesn’t make sense.
Maybe this is why Traci Lords was never charged with a single crime, although there are anywhere from 70 to 107 different titles containing pornographic footage of her shot while she was under 18, and she was a Penthouse Pet at the age of 15. Lords actually only made one porn movie after her 18th birthday, which is the only legal pornographic footage of her ever shot. Apparently she was arrested, but never charged. Hmm, her porn films and nude photo spread were seen by and distributed to millions of people, yet nobody saw fit to ever charge her with a crime. Meanwhile this girl showed some nudie photos of herself to a few people on the Internet and all of a sudden she’s a dangerous criminal?
What, was Traci Lords just lucky that she didn’t make her porn in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania?
The underlined portion is my point. So far as we know, these are the few facts known.
We don’t know anything else. We don’t know if what you state is the extent of her actions or not. We don’t know if this is part of a larger investigation.
Regarding the victim/defendant issue, the DA prosecutes on behalf of the people. The “victim” in the legal sense is the people, not the 15 year old. For instance, if you are mugged and refuse to assist the prosecution, they can still prosecute the mugger because they are not prosecuting on your behalf.
When more facts come to light, it might turn out to be the single dumbest idea a prosecutor ever had. But we don’t have enough information to come to an educated, reasonable conclusion about what’s going on.
I wonder if she’ll be tried as an adult? You gotta love the irony of that one.
I didn’t have the stones. Thank you.
I was thinking the same thing. Are there any other lawyers in the house with a contrary opinion? Why?
If there are no witnesses and no physical evidence that a crime was committed, how would they prove a mugging took place without my testimony? If they think someone mugged me because he now has some amount of money that I now don’t have, but I steadfastly tell them that I was not mugged, and I will say on the witness stand that I was not mugged, how would they actually prosecute that?
Also odd about what you said: when someone is raped, the victim is the person who was raped, when someone was murdered, the victim is the dead person, and when a child is sexually abused the victim is the child. But when a 15 year old takes naked pictures of herself, the victim is society? In what way did this harm society or ‘the people’ at all?
I think that if the media managed to get any inclination at all that this girl was coerced into taking those pictures, there would have been a Dateline or 20/20 special about it already.
What other information are you looking for here? Why do you think there is more information that we don’t know? What is so damned implausible about this having been entirely her idea and her action?
'Cause she’s only 15, dammit! We all know 15-year-olds just don’t DO stuff like this unless they’re coerced to by a nasty, perverted older man!
Of course, this doesn’t explain why I spent most of my teenage/young adult years (14-around 23) hanging out in public restrooms having anonymous sex with strangers who not only had no idea how old I was, but never even saw my face (because I didn’t want them to balk at the whole “underage” thing).
Teenagers don’t have sex or the urge to have sex, dammit! They’re simon-pure unless some evil adult makes them otherwise!
Yeah, like you, I remember what I was doing when I was 15. Had the Internet been so big then, I might’ve been this girl.
And it wasn’t for being coerced in the least. I’d lie about my age, do whatever I could to fake it so that I seemed older.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this is the whole story.