Man's life Over, Cops Decide He Watched Child Porn in First Class

Wade witnessed disturbing pictures of child pornography, including young girls, on the lap top of Grant Smith, a first-class flier who sat only a few feet away.
"He kept scrolling through the pictures and they became sexual and explicit. Little by little they were semi-nude, then completely nude. Just terrible, terrible stuff," said Wade.
The 47 year-old professor from Cottonwood Heights, Utah, was arrested when his flight landed in Boston. Smith was in Boston for a conference.
Wade said as soon as he saw the images he notified a flight attendant. He also took a cell phone picture of Smith looking at his screen.
"Even as I was trying to explain it, I broke down I couldn't contain it. So disturbing what was going on," said Wade.
Wade wanted to make sure something would be done so he e-mailed his son in Phoenix and asked him to call police in Boston.
Police told Wade they found even more disturbing images on Smith's laptop.
"When I was in the interview room with forensic computer police down the hall, they confirmed for me there were other images of sexual activity with grown ups," Wade told FOX 25.
"You decided to get involved. Do you consider yourself a hero?," Ward asked Wade.
Wade answered, "No. I think any common sense person would see this and understand what was going on. "


Read more: http://www.myfoxboston.com/dpp/news/local/plane-passenger-who-turned-in-porn-viewing-professor-scarred-from-images-20111129#ixzz1fAmoAIQ6

An anti-child pornography task force broke down the door of a jailed University of Utah professor’s Cottonwood Heights home and police also searched his campus office after the educator was arrested and charged with viewing explicit child pornography on a Utah-to-Boston flight.

Ken Wallentine, spokesman for the Utah Attorney General’s investigative division, said the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) unit was forced to batter down the door of Grant D. Smith’s condominium Monday night after efforts to obtain a key from neighbors and to "jimmy" the lock failed. Wallentine said he could not reveal exactly what was taken from the home.

I don't care what this man's life will be like

Smith’s case is one of many in Utah. From January to October of just this year 678 cases involving child porn have been investigated. 151 people have been arrested.
http://www.abc4.com/content/news/slc/story/U-Professors-porn-investigation-moves-to-home-and/ngHtJdf0S0-RUVkXU6HoTw.cspx

Do you care how much is Ex Wife and kids are hurt?

Lock them all up!

"We have been involved in the investigation into Professor Smith since before the plane landed in Massachusetts," said Ken Wallentine, chief of law enforcement with the Utah Attorney General's Office.

Monday night, Utah's ICAC team served a search warrant on Smith's Cottonwood Heights home. Although Wallentine could not comment Tuesday about what was seized, he confirmed a large number of items were taken from the house.

"There certainly is the possibility of additional criminal charges," Wallentine said.

According to a press release from the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office in Massachusetts, state troopers who arrested Smith at the Boston airport found multiple images of young girls on Smith's computer, some naked and engaged in sexual acts with adult men. The children were believed to be between the ages of 5 and 14.

"These weren't photos of a child in the bath that a parent might keep," said Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley. "These were explicitly sexual and extremely disturbing."

Investigators in Utah were trying to determine Tuesday whether any of the images were made in Utah and whether there are any victims living in the Beehive State.

"We've got good science that 8 out of 10 child porn suspects have had contact with an actual live child — not teens — young children. We have had a philosophy for several years to always look for victims," Wallentine said...

Whether Smith will ultimately be prosecuted in Massachusetts or Utah was yet to be decided, Wallentine said. He noted that the ICAC teams in both states have previously worked with each other...
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705395071/Investigators-seize-materials-from-University-of-Utah-professors-home.html

from the articles it doesn't seem to be Feds doing it, but rather Mass. and Utah STATE police forces

Also from the descriptions of content, it seems to be pictures of underage girls involved sexually with adults, not possibly nude pictures of his own children

So far most of your exculpations of his behavior don't seem to be holding water.

You did say that success is a 100% conviction rate when it comes to sex crimes....

I think that child porn laws in general are nutty and abusive and nothing about this case has changed my mind about that.

The child pornography laws are neither nutty nor abusive. All people have to do is avoid violating them.

No one denies that child pornography is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. However, it often seems like the laws related to child pornography are targeted at the wrong thing. That's why we get laws requiring filters, rather than the shut down of whoever is producing the content, and laws against those who end up having any on their hard drive, even as that could make a felon out of someone just because they receive an email. Take, for example (as pointed out by Slashdot), this story of a man who was searching online for regular (legal) pornography, but accidentally downloaded some underage pictures -- which he immediately deleted. Though the FBI officials who eventually searched his hard drive admit that the images had been deleted and could not be accessed, he was still charged with child pornography and is pleading guilty to get a shorter sentence (3.5 years, 10 years probation, and a lifetime on the sex offenders list).

Though this article serves as a warning of why you shouldn't go looking for porn online -- it would seem that the stronger argument is why the laws on possession should change. In cases like this, where the guy was clearly not out there seeking out or collecting such content, it seems ridiculous that he should be charged and feel the need to plead guilty. Anti-child porn efforts should really focus on those who produces and distributes such content. As for those who collect it, I would assume that mental health help would be a more appropriate response than jail time. And, for those who accidentally come across it... it seems fairly ridiculous to charge them as well.

Last week a Florida judge sentenced Daniel Enrique Guevara Vilca, a 26-year-old with no criminal record, to life in prison without the possibility of parole for looking at forbidden pictures. A jury convicted Vilca on 454 counts of possessing child pornography, one for each image found on his computer. Under Florida law, each count is a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Sentencing guidelines indicated a minimum term of 152 years, although Collier Circuit Judge Fred Hardt had discretion to impose a lighter sentence if he concluded it was justified by factors such as constitutional infirmity or Vilca's mental health. "Had Mr. Vilca actually molested a child," The New York Times notes, "he might well have received a lighter sentence."

While it is hard to make sense of that disparity under any set of values or priorities, the draconian punishments prescribed by state and federal laws for mere possession of child pornography seem to be based on the premise that anyone who looks at records of heinous acts must also be committing them or at least planning to do so. But as I noted in the July issue of Reason (and as the Times also points out), that simply isn't so: Research indicates that child porn consumers, like fans of violent movies, do not necessarily copy what they see. As Troy Stabenaw, a federal public defender who wrote a devastating 2009 critique (PDF) of federal sentencing guidelines for child pornography, tells the Times, "we ought to punish people for what they do, not for our fear."

The Times also quotes University of Utah law professor Paul Cassell, a former federal judge, who makes the familiar argument that "consumers of child pornography drive the market for the production of child pornography, and without people to consume this stuff there wouldn't be nearly as many children being sexually abused." How relevant is that concern now that people typically obtain child porn online for free? Steve Maresca, the assistant state attorney who prosecuted Vilca, tells the Times "these children are victimized, and when the images are shown over and over again, they're victimized over and over again." That claim seems even more problematic, since any such injury would require (at the very least) that victims know when people are looking at images of them. It also would not apply to child pornography featuring victims who are no longer alive.

I'm not sure either of these arguments is strong enough to justify criminalizing mere possession (as opposed to production) of child pornography. But I am sure the offense is not in the same moral ballpark as other crimes that are punished by life sentences. Cassell (who as a judge criticized absurdly harsh mandatory minimum sentences) agrees:

A life sentence for the crime of solely possessing child pornography would seem to be excessive. A life sentence is what we give first-degree murderers, and possession of child pornography is not the equivalent of first-degree murder.

My Reason piece, "Perverted Justice," cites more examples of senselessly severe child porn penalties, including the 200-year sentence received by a former Arizona high school teacher. Jesse Walker considered "The Blurry Boundaries of Child Porn" in a 2009 Reason essay.

I would assume that mental health help would be a more appropriate response than jail time.

The case is United States v. Hicks, an unpublished decision by the Fourth Circuit in which a child pornography suspect destroyed his hard drive in response to learning of the investigation.

According to the government’s brief, the defendant used an e-mail account to communicate with a suspected child pornography website and to purchase videos from it. Federal agents traced the e-mail account to the suspect, and they then went to the suspect’s home to ask questions. The suspect wasn’t there, but they left a business card with the suspect’s father, together with the request that the suspect contact them about his computer. The business card stated that the lead agent’s job position was as a “Child Pornography Team Leader.” The suspect called the next day and agreed to meet with the agents. During the subsequent meeting, the suspect admitted that he had seen some child pornography online and that he was familiar with some websites under investigation, but he denied having sought out child pornography or having saved any to his computer.

The agents asked the suspect if they could see his computer to confirm his story, but the suspect replied that they could not: When the suspect learned that the feds had dropped by, and when he realized that they were investigating him for child pornography, he had decided to destroy his hard drive. He “didn’t want to take any chances” of going to jail, he said. According to his brief, he had smashed his hard drive with a hammer, ran a magnet over it, and “thr[ew] the pieces out of his car window while driving.”

The feds apparently lacked the evidence to charge the suspect with possessing child pornography, but instead they charged and convicted him under a 2002 statute passed as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 18 U.S.C. 1519:

Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

On appeal, the Fourth Circuit affirms in a per curiam opinion. First, the defendant argues that the 2002 law should not apply to him because it was intended to apply to financial crimes not individuals and personal hard drives. The court dismisses this in a footnote (see fn1) on the ground that the statute is unambiguous. The defendant then makes a Due Process challenge. Although it’s somewhat hard to follow, the argument seems to be that the computer was his own private property and that interfering with his control of the property somehow violated Due Process. The court disagrees, concluding that the passage of the statute and the notice given to him as to his charges satisfied the Due Process clause.

Finally, the suspect makes a Fourth Amendment argument, although the court muddles its brief analysis. The defendant argued that it violated his Fourth Amendment rights to convict him of destroying the computer given that it was his computer. According to the defendant, the Fourth Amendment gave him a right to control his property that was taken away when the law took away his right to destroy it, constituting an unlawful seizure. The court disagrees, stating that “there was no meaningful interference with Hicks’s possessory interests [and therefore no seizure] because he did not have a property right in the images of child pornography. See Helton v. Hunt, 330 F.3d 242, 247 (4th Cir. 2003).”

For what it’s worth, that’s not quite right. A possessory interest has nothing to do with a property right. Indeed, the whole point of contraband crimes is that they are crimes for having a possessory interest in what one cannot lawfully possess — that is, for possessing something for which one cannot have a valid property right. Helton v. Hunt says nothing to the contrary. Further, the defendant’s claim was as to the seizure of his physical hard drive, not contraband images which may or may not have been stored inside it. The court is right that there was no seizure, but it’s for a different reason: the government never took control of the property that the defendant elected to destroy. A seizure requires an actual submission to law enforcement control, see California v. Hodari D, which never occurred here. Anyway, it’s not a big deal: This is a non-precedential opinion, and the court was right that there was no seizure — and even if there was a seizure, there is no possible remedy here. Still, I thought I would point it out anyway

A life sentence for the crime of solely possessing child pornography would seem to be excessive. A life sentence is what we give first-degree murderers, and possession of child pornography is not the equivalent of first-degree murder.

Destroying Hard Drive Leads to Conviction for Obstructing Federal Investigation

I disagree, most of us can see a situation in which we might have to kill another human being. None of us, (except for pathetic inadequates like you and the dribbler) could see a situation in which we would abuse a child

Quote:

Destroying Hard Drive Leads to Conviction for Obstructing Federal Investigation

And the moral of that tale is, don't download any child pornography, or anything illegal you don't want the Feds to see, and then you won't have to destroy your hard drive in a state of panic.