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Later this month, a North Carolina high school student will appear in a state court and face five child pornography-related charges for engaging in consensual sexting with his girlfriend.
What's strange is that of the five charges he faces, four of them are for taking and possessing nude photos of himself on his own phone—the final charge is for possessing one nude photo his girlfriend took for him. There is no evidence of coercion or further distribution of the images anywhere beyond the two teenagers' phones.
Similarly, the young woman was originally charged with two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor—but was listed on her warrant for arrest as both perpetrator and victim. The case illustrates a bizarre legal quandry that has resulted in state law being far behind technology and unable to distinguish between predatory child pornography and innocent (if ill-advised) behavior of teenagers.
The boy is being charged with child pornography for taking pictures of himself.
[These teens were of the age of consent in North Carolina and could legally have had sex with each other. Juvenile court jurisdiction ends at age 16 in North Carolina, however, so they are being tried as adults on felony charges of possessing child porn... of themselves. -Ed.]
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Saturday September 05 2015, @03:58PM
I'm sure it's not universal, but last time I was on a jury selection both prosecution and defence could each only veto up to a certain number of people. In fact, one side (the defence, IIRC) ran out of vetoes; when they tried vetoing one more, the judge actually verbally told them they'd used all of theirs.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 05 2015, @06:06PM
Last time I was a participant in jury duty the judge overruled every dismissal the defense made and dismissed jurors himself whenever the prosecutor looked at him. If that was not illegal, it surely ought to be. Then again, the prosecutor was in the room so clearly he would not pursue the case.
It was a case where the police testimony was not readily believable* and so was already brought up during questioning. The defense tried to dismiss jurors that answered "yes" to the questions of (paraphrasing) "Do you have any friends or relatives in the police department?" and "Do police always tell the truth." Anyone that said 8"no" to the second question was dismissed as having potential bias by the judge himself.
*Two police spotted a black pan in a car at night and tried to pull him over. He took off. The police claim to positively identify him as a specific person during the chase. The suspect then managed to outrun the police, get back into his vehicle, calmly drive away, then be pulled over by the same police hours later. Somewhere between the time the police lost the suspect and pulled him over again they found a gun that had no markings but they knew was tossed by said man. Which was unfortunately lost in evidence (this made some local news). Here is the kicker: this was a district in southeast Michigan. At the time there were no streetlights, many foreclosed homes, and the suspect was pushing the weight-limits of his court chair. So the whole thing came down to the believably of the story where a 300+ pound black man outrun police, in a circle back to his car mind you, while simultaneously being positively identified in pitch black conditions and associated with a gun that no one except the arresting officers have seen.