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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: 1, Disagree) by Francis on Saturday September 05 2015, @04:38PM
You don't solve abuses of power by abusing power. Jury nullification just ensures that the issue is never actually dealt with.
It's not an outrageous claim, it's completely true. And just because some people consider a crime to be victimless, does not mean that it is victimless. The state steps in as the victim in cases where the damage is considered to be widespread. It also allows for the state to prosecute in cases where the victim is at risk of being intimidated by the defendant.
The people do have the right to decide whether or not something ought to be illegal. You vote for people that support the things you support. In some parts of the country we even get to directly propose laws as initiatives or the legislators can send things to the public for a vote as a referendum. The jury box is completely the wrong place to be deciding whether or not something should be illegal.
What you're proposing is tantamount to anarchy. We've had a system where jurors did that in a widespread way back in the "good" old days when it was damn near impossible to convict a white person of lynching a black person. The jurors didn't see a problem with that. If we open the door to jurors making their own decisions about what the law should be, there's no telling what they will and won't go for. I highly doubt it will be anything that dramatic in the modern era, but there's still a bunch of people out there that consider GLBT folks to be subhuman, not to mention illegal immigrants, so I wouldn't be surprised if it still happens.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Saturday September 05 2015, @09:21PM
I am a crackpot