If I missed an earlier thread on this, it wasn’t for lack of searching…
In a nutshell, Judge Alex Kozinski, the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, was serving as the trial judge in United States v. Isaacs, a case in which the accused, in which Ira Isaacs, is alleged to have distributed videos depicting bestiality and other images that qualify as legally obscene.
I say “was” because Kozinski has now recused himself from the trial, a step which may have caused the collapse of the government’s case, since the jury was already sworn and jeopardy had attached to the proceeding.
He took this step because a website Kozinski’s son allegedly maintains privately, supposedly accessible only to him and the family, contained racy and pornographic pictures, and this fact became public. The images on the website were not obscene, not even close to the line.
In my view, he was correct to recuse himself, simply because the appearance of impropriety is important. But I also think that the initial reporting of the website’s contents was wildly inaccurate, and led to the furor.
Some are discussing whether Kozinski should step down as Chief Judge - a step that is wholly unwarranted.
Or am I wrong? Does his access to a dirty pics library ruin him as a chief judge?
I’m not seeing it. Technically we all have access to pornography. Doesn’t matter who owns or runs it. Any internet connected computer can get you there in 5 seconds. Barring that a trip to your local convenience store for a few magazines is simple enough as well. So what if his son owns or operates these things and particularly if it is private (so no financial concern)?
Sounds like his son is doing something completely legal. Saying that somehow makes the judge unable to rule fairly is beyond me. Some people like hunting animals, that does not make them unable to rule on a case of murder or even cruelty to animals. Some people like having sex, that does not make them unable to rule fairly on a case of rape.
And what…federal judges are supposed to be somehow above enjoying nudie pics? Puhleeze…
The real crime here is letting this guy get away because of a technicality (assuming of course the guy is guilty…but there should be a trial to determine that and not just show him the door with a fare-thee-well).
The original articles I read about this implied that they were his pictures, not his son’s. It makes a lot more sense if they were his son’s, since I didn’t see a judge being able to both maintain a site and being so clueless about its accessibility.
I read only vague descriptions of the content, which, while maybe not pornographic, seemed wildly inappropriate.
I can certainly believe he had no knowledge of what was up there, so if that is true, I see no more reason for him to resign than if his son had nasty porn hidden under his bed. Accessible to the family doesn’t mean accessed by the family. I doubt many people not maintaining a family website visit it very often, and the questionable content could be not accessible from the home page, but still open to those who knew or guessed or found the url.
If the images in question weren’t obscene, and Judge Kozinski did not traffic them commercially or otherwise, why did he need to step down? I don’t see the appearance of impropriety.
I would guess that the impropriety would be “Can a judge who owns and enjoys pornography rule fairly on a trial regarding pornography/obscenity?” Personally, I think that’s ridiculous, but I bet that’s what it is.
Seems to me that, if you want to fairly judge the difference between legal pornography, and obscenity, you want a judge who’s got some experience with the former category.
Here’s the way I heard it tell. . . There was no “website” per se, as people would ordinarily think of a “website.” IOW, it wasn’t something they designed page content for, and uploaded pictures and/or text to. It was a file folder on their personal server’s hard drive, that was apparently indexed so that images within it could be linked to directly instead of uploaded to an external server, like geocities or flickr. I’m not a web person, so I don’t know the technical term for this. Hopefully someone will come along and explain it better than I have.
What was stored in this folder was primarily jokes and just silly stuff. But there were files that might’ve been “questionable”, apparently. However, it wasn’t a private folder, and anyone in the family, including his son, had access to downloading files into it.
It seems that he might have been unaware of the existence of these files, or the ability to view files other than what was directly linked to, when he posted a direct link to a file in that folder, in a “joke” email he submitted for inclusion in some silly “Am I Hot or Not” type thing on website for judges called “Underneath Their Robes”.
Here’s the link with the full text of his letter (it’s actually quite funny).
Someone following a link he provided in that email, decided to go hunting around in the directory file and found a bunch of things they thought were scandalous, and we go from there.
I think this whole thing is ridiculous. Even if they were his images, that doesn’t render him incapable or forming a decision as to whether or not some other image would be considered illegal under the law. It’s not like if he had images of 2 adults having sex, he couldn’t rule on an image that portrayed sex with a 5 year old as being illegal.
No pun intended (ok, maybe slightly ;)), but I think this guy got shafted.
I am so so sick of people on the internet constantly referencing the works of Judith Viorst. I mean, sure, it was funny the first 1000 times, but it’s played out, man. Played. Out.
But the images on Judge “I’m Naked Under My Robes” Kozinski’s website were not pornographic, according to the OP. Therefore, not illegal.
It would be like requiring a judge in a DUI case to not hold a driver’s license, not like requiring him to be sober. Abusus non tollit usum and so forth.
I can see a judge with obscene or near-obscene pictures on his/his son’s website, but presuming these are in the centerfold category and did not involve underage models or animals or others not capable of informed consent, I don’t see the issue.
Maybe that’s the issue. I’m thinking Miss January; whereas the judge’s son had Hal Briston Meets Little Bo Peep or whatever.
Because obscene images don’t have a definition that’s easily understandable to the lay public… that is, because the term admits of use in non-technical, non-legal discussions in which everyone’s opinion comes into play, thus confusing the issue … it would have been a public relations disaster. The “short version” of the story was “Judge presiding over pornography trial has porn on his computer!!!”
This is the kind of thing that undermines confidence in the judiciary. There’s no merit when the accusation is analyzed, but “the appearance of impropriety” is a very low bar.
Then shouldn’t the public be educated instead of giving in to the mob mentality?
I thought in the end law enforcement and the judiciary did their jobs even when it sometimes seemed obscure or wrong to the public (e.g. some presumed criminal walks on a technicality).
Here justice is not served because it sounds from your OP that double jeopardy applies and the judge recusing himself lets that guy go free. I see nothing wrong with another court looking at the topic and if they decide there is nothing there, the judge is fine, then that should be it.
For those few who hand wave and scream this is a miscarriage of justice well…the guy can appeal the case and I am not sure you can appease everyone no matter what (nor should anyone try).
Capitulating to the hysteria is the real miscarriage of justice here it looks like. I do not see how good PR trumps that (not to mention this would probably drop off the public radar pretty quick anyway).
I suppose that is understandable, if not very sensible. I can easily see how bestiality could be obscene, but I have no idea what the images on Kosinski’s website might be like. All there is to go on is the description of them as “not even close” to obscene, which to me means centerfolds and the like.
Would bestiality be inherently obscene? To me, it would be, since animals cannot give consent and a key element in my personal definition of obscenity (not the legal one) is coercion or violence.
By the way, this seems like a decent example of what I was trying to describe above.
There’s a website, http://xkcd.com/. If you go there, you can see that it’s a webcomic site. One would expect that what has been officially uploaded to their public web page, and is searchable content, would be their webcomics and not other personal images and such. Those might be stored somewhere on their server, but they aren’t “on” the website.
Unfortunately, they have not protected all the directories on their server, and I can get to the Parent Directory, as well as subfolders, and find all KINDS of images that haven’t been uploaded, but which can be viewed nonetheless.
You can see dozens and dozens of images, like this, and this, and this, and so on, none of which are searchable on their official “website”.
This is apparently what happened to Judge Kozinski’s files. There may or may not have been any content on www.alex.kozinski.com, but what is certain is that none of the files in question were made public on that website, except in that they didn’t realize they needed to protect those subdirectories from access, giving people a page that looks like this, if they tried to access it by deleting the image file name in the url, http://www.amschwartz.net/images/Alan_M_Schwartz01.jpg .
There’s a difference. When an accused “walks on a technicality” what is being preserved is his (the accused’s) rights. It’s appropriate – even necessary – to hold that in higher importance than the public’s erroneous perception. In this case, the judge has no “right” to conduct a particular trial.
Actually, that issue is in the air. When a mistrial occurs after jeopardy has attached, it’s not necessarily a bar to retrial. (Classic examples: hung jury or mistrial on defense motion.) But when a mistrial occurs that’s not at the behest of the defense, then jeopardy can be a problem… unless the original mistrial was for “manifest necessity.”
