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"Accidental" Download Sending 22-Year-Old Man To Prison
Posted by
Soulskill
on Saturday December 05, @11:21AM
from the do-not-pass-go dept.
from the do-not-pass-go dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Two years ago, Matthew White searched Limewire for porn. He was looking for 'College Girls Gone Wild,' but ended up downloading some images of child pornography. This was accidental, according to White, and he quickly deleted the images. A year later, the FBI showed up on his family's doorstep and asked to search the computer. After thorough sleuthing, the FBI found some images 'deep within the hard drive.' According to White, the investigators agreed that he himself could not have accessed the files anymore. Matthew now faces 20 years in jail for possession of child pornography. On advice from his lawyer, he intends to plead guilty so that he will 'hopefully' end up with 3.5 years in jail, 10 years probation and a registration as a sex offender. 'The FBI could not comment on this specific case, but said if child pornography is ever downloaded accidentally, the user needs to call authorities immediately. They may confiscate your computer, but it's better than the alternative.'"
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Submission: 'Accidental' Download Sending Man (22) To Prison by Anonymous Coward
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Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely ridiculous
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Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, the blurb says the guy did erase it. The investigators found it in a "deep" scan. Which means they just used a block editor.
FWIW, there are loads of ways you could have this happen to you. Like this for instance [consumerist.com] I recall a story where a church bought a new computer and it was full of porn too, but I can't find the story.
BTW, posting as AC to tell my story. This happened to me once and I wasn't even looking for porn. I've had two downloads through bittorrent that weren't what they claimed to be. One was a cd full of kiddie stuff claiming to be an engineering application. Terrified me! I deleted it and used bcwipe about a dozen times. [jetico.com]
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Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Insightful)
The FBI malware is invisible until it causes your wipe to fail (pay particular attention to wiping the recycle bin, even if there's nothing in it). In that case, the best solution for a failed wipe is to format and then wipe the entire drive.
As others have wisely noted, calling the FBI would be a bad idea. Those bust-hungry thugs would interrogate you and then twist your words into a confession of guilt before making a media circus of the whole thing. You'd think they'd be busy with real crime.
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Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Insightful)
But, over two year and at least one or two defrags (I'd hope), the data would have been overwritten and unrecoverable.
I'd suspect that it wasn't just one file that was old. The FBI doesn't just show up to random people's houses to look for child porn. They had a lead, which I'm sure was more substantial. To get the search warrant, they had to prove probable cause to the judge. That warrant has to be specific to what they are searching for. It wasn't just a blanket "we think he's bad, we're going to find why". Nor was it "he downloaded College Girls Gone Wild 99.wmv, we want a warrant".
They don't talk about the specifics of what they already had on him. I'm sure it was relevant though. It definitely wasn't a courtesy check for kiddie porn. By the time they show up and start asking questions, they already have a case, they're just completing their investigation.
The sheriff's department showed up to my ex-mother-in-law's house a couple years ago. They wanted to search her computer, along with any other computer in the house. They took her computer, and brought it back a few days later. The case was, she had a tenant in her spare room. He had used her computer. They already had a list of things which is what brought them there. Unfortunately, she didn't know about the pending investigation, and I was there between the time they knew there was a problem and the time they showed up to investigate. While I was there, she was complaining that her computer was slow. I did a sweep for malware, cleared the browser cache and history, and defragged the drive. I don't know that there was anything to find. I told the investigator exactly what I had done. They weren't able to recover anything related to the case, because it was now clean. The most they found was my searches for flight times and weather reports, and items related to her work, all of which happened after I cleaned the machine up. I didn't notice anything while I was cleaning, but I also wasn't looking for tracks of kiddie porn.
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Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Insightful)
> I'd suspect that it wasn't just one file that was old. The FBI doesn't just show up to random people's houses to look for child porn.
They don't. But they can show up when people click on bait links that the FBI themselves plant:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9899151-38.html [cnet.com]
So Mr Smythe one day accidentally clicks and downloads a child porn image. He deletes it.
Then maybe a year later, Mr Smythe is looking for porn, and clicks on various links, and by mistake (or curiosity) clicks on "Minors having sex".
And the next day the FBI kick down his door, and search his computer for child porn.
They find nothing, except one _deleted_ child porn image.
From the article - the FBI won't provide any files: "The supposed video files actually were gibberish and contained no illegal images."
Think that can't happen? Why not? The "Justice System" has been merrily charging children for "distributing child porn" when they consensually send each other nude pics of themselves.
They love to say they are protecting the children. But it's clearly a lie!
How can you say you are protecting children when you are charging _children_, threatening them with decades in prison and actually sending some of them to prison for _consensual_[1] sex.
Which do you think will scar the child more and for longer? Being "touched" by the Government or being touched by the average pervert?
[1] How do you think you would feel if you were a 14 year old girl, have a 17 year old boyfriend, and you two have sex a few times (hey it feels good right?) and then sometime later, the cops take him away and The Government sends him to prison for a few decades and everyone says bad things about him and that he did a very bad thing to you. So who is scarring who for life here? If it was clearly consensual, maybe just let the minor decide whether it was rape or not, when the minor achieves legal adulthood.
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Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Insightful)
Get a different lawyer.
Because we don't have nearly enough people in prison that we have to start going after the truly marginal cases like this one. If the FBI could recover the files, then they could also recover the fact they were old and the kid tried to delete them.
There are two cases the law needs to change to consider:
- Something truly accidental, like this case. Or some malware infection that tracks it in. Intent has to figure into the equation somewhere.
- Sexting where teens are sending photos of themselves.
Those cases weren't envisioned when the laws were drafted and putting these kinds of people on a sex offender registry dilutes the effectiveness and intent of that tool. This and that stupid law that says if you tap into an unencrypted wifi spot you're breaking the law. Insanity.
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What's a district attorney to do... (Score:5, Insightful)
What's a district attorney to do when someone anonymously sends the D.A. an email with kiddie porn attached? Technically, the D.A. downloaded it.
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Re:What's a district attorney to do... (Score:5, Insightful)
Start a witch hunt to find who sent it. Remember, attack is the best defense.
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Prison Sentences (Score:5, Interesting)
Whatever the (dis)merits of the application of the law are here you Americans really, really need to shorten your prison sentences.
Where I live (Finland), it's hard to actually be imprisoned for 20 years even if you murder someone. Sure, technically killers get lifetime sentences, but they are mostly let out after a decade or so.
And despite us technically having lots of killers and other criminals on the loose, this country is very safe. I believe the science actually says that prisons manufacture and "enhance" criminals.
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Re:Prison Sentences (Score:5, Informative)
Politics drives it. In the US, no politician dares look soft on crime. Advocating ridiculously long sentences is a quick and easy way to bolster an image. And failing to be tough is an even quicker way to end a political career. Huckabee is getting flak because one man he let out early has shot and killed 4 police officers. Type "Dukakis" into a search engine and one of the first things that shows up is Willie Horton.
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Re:Prison Sentences (Score:5, Insightful)
And frankly, and I say this as Democrat, Huckabee's decision wasn't wrong. 100+ years for the crimes was crazy. Even letting him out via parole wasn't unreasonable.
He then apparently went crazy. Actual mental illness, which he didn't have any sign of when they were letting him out.
The point he should been locked up is when he ended up in police custody again a while back. It would have been nice if someone had noticed he was batshit insane at that time, held a competency hearing, and locked him up on that while he was helped.
But we stopped caring about the mentally ill in this society a while back.
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Re:Call the cops (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary states that if you accidentally download kiddie porn you need to call the cops asap. Typically, people who are guilty or trying to hide something don't call the cops on themselves.
Yes but the summary also states that accidentally downloading child porn will get you 22 years in prison.
No thank you, I will not be calling the cops to have myself sent to prison for 22 years for not doing anything wrong.
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Re:Call the cops (Score:5, Insightful)
The law makes no distinction if the child porn you possess was obtained accidentally or intentionally.
Its just like buying a used car from a drug dealer and going across a border checkpoint.. The sniffing dogs smell some dope that got stashed underneath the seat and YOU are the one who gets put in prison.
I'm not a libertarian but even I can see how utterly broke and immoral the system has become to get to such a point.
Calling the cops is a complete gamble. The cops will likely say "you have child porn, I am required to arrest you and charge you with possession, you can explain it to the judge".
Best thing to do is a low-level multi-pass format, or a new HD. But that is if you *know* that you downloaded CP. If you don't know, cops may bust down your door some months later, seize your computer, then charge you once they find a thumbnail in some cache folder that was deleted 4 months ago.
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Re:Call the cops (Score:5, Informative)
"Its just like buying a used car from a drug dealer and going across a border checkpoint.."
You can have your local K-9 unit run the dog through any car you buy if you ask nicely. The military will do so too, and when I was in the USAF I
had them do one car I bought as a precaution.
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Re:Never volunteer anything to the cops (Score:5, Informative)
He is represented by a public defender, which means he can't afford a new lawyer, and his current lawyer can't afford to put together a respectable case.
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Re:Never volunteer anything to the cops (Score:5, Insightful)
The true moral of the story, is quit breaking the fucking law, and if you see someone else breaking the law (like distributing child porn) fucking tell someone. Do those two things and you'll be fine unless someone decides to railroad you. Then you could be screwed, but your record will be your best defense.
In the land of many laws we are all lawbreakers.
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Re:Never volunteer anything to the cops (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, when there's secret laws, and so many laws that lawyers have to specialize in small sections of the law, and still get it wrong, it's impossible to be a law-abiding citizen.
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Re:Never volunteer anything to the cops (Score:5, Insightful)
The true moral of the story, is quit breaking the fucking law, and if you see someone else breaking the law (like distributing child porn) fucking tell someone. Do those two things and you'll be fine unless someone decides to railroad you. Then you could be screwed, but your record will be your best defense.
The problem is that we have so many laws, and even the most innocent thing can bring down the law. We had a case here with a roadside coffee stand on a farm. The law says you can operate a concession incidental to the farming use. Well, the way the economy tanked, the farm quit making any money. In the meantime, the coffee shop is still selling lattes, and pretty soon, it's the major money maker for these folks. OOOOPS! Here comes the law, they have a "nonconforming business use" and have to get laywers to keep from getting fined, shut down, have liens put on their property, all because their farm income went into the crapper.
Another case: A guy builds a model railroad, one of those that you can ride on, where the cars are about 12" high. He gives rides to neighbors and such. OOOPS! The state comes down on him for having an illegal amusement park. All because he wanted to share his hobby with his friends. And they actually made him dismantle the whole thing.
So, do you have any hobbies? Any side income? Do you do anything at all? Then you're probably breaking the law.
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Re:Call the cops (Score:5, Insightful)
Innocent people are more likely to be flustered, etc., when confronted with allegations of a crime.
They'll act guilty, whereas the true crook will look you right in the eye and lie. He or she has nothing to lose by lying.
The old story of "liars can't look you straight in the eye" is a lie. Crooks do it all the time. An honest person would be ashamed tha people would even *think* that they did something wrong, which is why they act in ways that pop psychology says "they're acting guilty."
"No warrant, no entry. I have nothing to hide, but I do value my privacy, and you should be spending your time catching crooks, not trying to weasel around the law like a crook. Have a nice day."
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Call the FBI? (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah, I can see that one working out well...
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Public Defender (Score:5, Insightful)
Matt is pleading guilty on the advice of his public defender in hopes of getting a three and a half year sentence.
In other words, he doesn't have the money to actually fight this.
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Re:Public Defender (Score:5, Insightful)
Matt is pleading guilty on the advice of his public defender in hopes of getting a three and a half year sentence.
In other words, he doesn't have the money to actually fight this.
Many public defenders are lawyers called upon by the courts and they're not making the billable hours they need by doing it. So, the quicker they get rid of the case the more apt they are to get back to business.
Regardless of what happens now. The kid's life is over. His name is all over the place and employers who do any sort of background check will find this.
He will have to spend the rest of his life on some sort of public aid. He may become a bitter angry person that cannot contribute to society even if he wants to contribute. What a goddamn waste.
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Re:Public Defender (Score:5, Informative)
The trojans cannot be deleted. They cannot be seen, even if the user has full administrative access including the ability to see and modify hidden and system files. The trojans may be found accidentally when a wipe on a hitherto unknown file fails. The trojans run on Windows.
tl;dr - Don't run Windows if you need horrific pornography to get your rocks off. And no, the above did not happen to me.
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Bad Ideas (Score:5, Insightful)
DO NOT CALL THE AUTHORITIES
Worst idea ever. If you actually have undeleted CP on your computer you will get 20 years.
The only safe thing to do is destroy the hard drive.
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Re:Bad Ideas (Score:5, Informative)
I was thinking the same thing.
I remember that story a few weeks ago... Someone found a shotgun in their back garden (this is the UK) and called the local police station to tell them he is bringing it in. Well anyway long story short because it was loaded and the box also had ammo he ended up getting a minimum of I believe three years.
Yet another story, this time from the US.... Someone finds Meth, attempts to turn it into the police... Gets hit with possession of drugs. This anecdote was on a cops-like show no less.
So too bad for us that common sense fails so often even in a legal system that is designed to have "common sense" designed into it at at least three levels (Police, Prosecutors Office, and Judge). They love to use the excuse that they enforce the laws as written (when in reality laws are meant to be interpreted so exactly this kind of thing doesn't happen!).
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Re:Bad Ideas (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really.
In the UK possession of a firearm is a crime. He found a shotgun, held on to it for 24 hours, called the police but didn't tell them what he was bringing in, took public transportation with a loaded shotgun, showed up at the station, and plonked an illegal weapon on the front desk. He was an idiot and he will probably face some jail time for his ineptitude. He should have left the crime scene undisturbed and called the police. The UK police have dealt with other situations and even had citizens take possession of firearms when they were in dangerous locations ( playground ) and there were no charges in those cases.
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Re:No (Score:5, Informative)
You can't expect thought on the subject. You can't expect a rational examination of the arguments, actions or context. People are stupid enough to begin with; when you bring this subject into the fold any trace of intelligence completely disappears.
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Don't plead guilty (Score:5, Insightful)
Should always maintain your innocence in these type of cases because the guilty plea will haunt you the rest of your life. 3.5 years is still ridiculous.
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Re:Don't plead guilty (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh and the advice of going to the FBI is stupid. Don't talk to the police!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc [youtube.com]
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Re:Don't plead guilty (Score:5, Insightful)
You are assuming you would get a sane jury, and not one like:
Prosecutor: "Is it true the FBI found child porn pictures on your computer?"
You: "*Deleted* pictures"
Prosecutor: "And you admit downloading these files via Limewire"
You: "By *accident*"
Prosecutor: "I rest my case"
Jury: "He admitted downloading child porn, where's the nearest tree to hang him?"
Judge: "You can only give him 20 years in prison"
Jury: *grumble* "Well, 20 years it is then"
Seems like one of the most dangerous things you could possibly do in the US these days is search for something like "sex" on P2P and just set the whole bunch to download. I mean clearly anyone who'd do that is so perverted they deserve life in prison.
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Re:He's screwed NOW (Score:5, Insightful)
This is were the Internet shows its evil side.
There was no internet in 1692.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials [wikipedia.org]
No, this is where HUMANITY shows its evil side.
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the real lesson (Score:5, Informative)
If the FBI shows up at your door and asks to search your computer, the correct answer is 'No.'
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Don't Talk to Police (Score:5, Informative)
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self-incrimination (Score:5, Insightful)
'The FBI could not comment on this specific case, but said if child pornography is ever downloaded accidentally, the user needs to call authorities immediately.'
At which point you've just confessed to trafficking in child porn. No, the proper thing to do is have a secure file deletion utility to nuke all evidence on your system.
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Re:self-incrimination (Score:5, Funny)
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Insanity (Score:5, Insightful)
Child porn has just become way too much of a boogeyman these days. Even if he had downloaded the images to look at - what harm would it have caused? He didn't ruin some girls life by looking at pictures that already exist.
Personally, just to get around stupid cases like this, I'd say that simple POSSESSION of child pornography shouldn't even be illegal. The point is the harm done to the actual children. By that token PRODUCTION should be illegal as that's when the harm is done. BUYING it (through cash or barter) should also be illegal as it finances production of more material. Other than that? Having a picture or video on your hard drive hurts no one, and it isn't going to turn someone into a stark raving mad child molester anymore than playing GTA turns them into a murderer.
If simple possession were not against the law then every one of these borderline gray area cases like this would go away.
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Re:Devil's Advocate (Score:5, Insightful)
This "theory" has pretty similar validity to that of the "phlogiston theory".
If it were true, images of all kinds would promote all sorts of other behaviours. Vanilla porn would cause wide-spread rape. Images of murder, warfare, terrorism etc (all which appear hourly on TV and are watched by hundreds of millions of people) would lead to daily rampages of thousands of axe wielding murderers running through the streets of any country with large cable TV reach like, say, Canada. Murderers competing with thousands of bomb-totting terrorists, followed shortly by whole armies of home-grown para-military-militias fighting each other ... and on and on.
The truth is much simpler: as someone pointed out on this thread, "fighting" child molestation is a sure-fire short-cut to political power as mentioning it has the apparent effect of completely disabling higher brain functions in majority of the populace, and its no different than any other drummed-up bogeyman of the days past used for this purpose by truly evil charlatans, like fifth-column Communists, witches, demonic possession etc and so on.
Total bullshit. Children age and become adults and the simple fact is that human brain's facilities for facial recognition are insufficient to maintain recognition without any other circumstantial links (research shows that we recognize our old acquaintances based on other cues such as a series of contextual memories across time). This is why police has to use computers to "age" photos of children gone missing for more than a few years - people simply cannot recognize them. And if you cannot be recognized, any claims of "compounded harm" are simply a result of suggestions of the "holy warriors" and "therapists" whose business is to ensure that any and all claims are suitably exaggerated, logic and empirical evidence be damned.
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Another victim in the war on child porn (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think the right move would be... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Appalling (Score:5, Insightful)
This is shocking and appalling and must stop. This sort of thing makes it impossible to be able to even look at webpages on the net. What if one accidentily clicks on a link without knowing what it goes to and ends up with these files in their web browser cache? Clicking on a link is not enough to show intent, we cannot go on a wild witch hunt where everyone is assumed guilty until proven innocent. Under the law, it is the act of taking pictures of children in a sexually suggestive way is what should be considered illegal. For some time it has been argued that those who were purchasing such material were helping to contribute to this. However, an accidental download of such a thing does not contribute in any material way to it whatsoever and in most cases, such as we see here, is completely accidental. There are serious problems with this. This is like arresting a person for seeing a blank sheet of paper on a sidewalk, picking it up and noticing that on the other side there was child porn, since they had simply picked it up and held it. The notion is so outrageous and this is exactly what is going on here. This has nothing to do about protecting children and these prosecutions are not protecting children. That is NOT what this dragnet is about. They are NOT protecting children but they are attacking and destroying the lives of completely innocent people. In fact, many childrens lives have already been destroyed because they took a picture of themselves and simply had the picture on their cell phone. This is about thought control and precrime, because by accidentily downloading this, no one anywhere has been harmed, all it is a copy of bits. Really, this massive abuse of the law needs to stop.
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do the math (Score:5, Informative)
Do the math. What's the most popular porn? Girls as close to 18 as possible. Combine that with user submitted porn. Combine that with typical porn viewing habits, i.e. way too much. Now do some stats. Who's leftover that doesn't have something illegal in their cache? No one who looks at lots of porn, that's for sure. Face it. If someone doesn't like you, they can mess your life up financially, politically, emotionally, really anything they fell like if they are malicious.
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The tapping of the tubes is complete (Score:5, Interesting)
What this speaks -- loudly and clearly -- to me is that the national tapping of any and all communication lines is complete. And, when things are slow and the FBI can't find a terrorist cell or -power group to take down, they troll their logs, and look to hang someone that no one would defend.
I'm sure that both the EFF and the ACLU will jump in here any minute now...
It just makes the case for using cryptography in everything you do online. I don't know how far it goes though. It may be that they finally laid off Zimmerman because they have enough horsepower to break anything that bubbles up to the surface as potentially interesting.
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My $.02 (Score:5, Informative)
Matt White's attorney probably had no choice but to take the plea and dispose of the case quickly. The system is designed so that the PDs can't take anything to trial on account of the sheer volume of cases they have to manage; they're forced to plead everything out and pray they get a good deal. (If they took even a small fraction of their cases to trial, their other clients would be waiting for years to have their cases heard, and there's this pesky little piece of paper that guarantees people the right to a speedy trial. (Of course, it also guarantees the right to effective counsel, but the bar for what constitutes "effective" is ridiculously low.)
It's a win-win for the people who matter: the DA gets to scratch another kill mark into his desk, the prison system gets another warm body it can use to justify its budget, the politicians who depend on prisons to keep the headcounts in their districts high get another "constituent" who can't vote, plus they get to claim they're "tough on crime" and are "protecting the children".
The fact that an (arguably) innocent man has his life ruined as a result doesn't even factor into the equation. He and the public defender are pawns. It's not that the $ystem hates them, it's that, to the people who run the show, they truly, truly do not matter.
So the moral of the story is: if you accidentally download CP, pull the plug on the computer, rip out the hard drive, and destroy it immediately. (Okay, maybe you can leave it powered up for the time it takes to back up your documents, &c., but no longer. It's hammer time.)
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He Should Argue (Score:5, Interesting)
If so we should be thanking this man for harming the supporters of child pornography. Even if it was unintentional and immediately deleted.
Now I am going to destroy any credibility I had by quoting Captain Jean-Luc Picard. "I don't know how to communicate this, or even if it is possible. But the question of justice has concerned me greatly of late. And I say to any creature who may be listening, there can be no justice so long as laws are absolute. Even life itself is an exercise in exceptions. "
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Where do they keep finding 12 morons? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have to assume this guy is not guilty, not because of the presumption of innocence, but rather by the lack of accessible cp on his computer. Pedophiles don't just quit cold turkey, and even if he is a pedophile, quit cold turkey (doesn't happen), hey great, he's fixed his problem on his own. Going with that:
Where does the government keep finding 12 morons to vote guilty in the jury box? I know this particular guy's case isn't going to a jury, but his lawyer seems to think he's screwed if he does. With easy to explain facts like this, both the DA (who wouldn't bring charges that would hurt his win %) and defense thinks there is a high likely hood of conviction? Are you kidding me?
And how many CRAZY guilty verdicts have we read about? Why are juries stacked with idiots too stupid to see that they could just as likely be in the defendant's seat for a multitude of offenses?
Quick side story: *all numbers, except age are fudged to prevent recrimination* I'm 32 (so far so good on my plan to outlive Jesus) and have been on a Jury 1 time. It was a drug charge, which I kinda figured out during jury selection based on the questions I was asked, so I shaped my answers accordingly. It ended up being a trial of a 19 year old kid found with 5 marijuana plants in a "grow box" (nice setup, bought online for like 2k, could of built his own for 800). The prosecution presented their case, the defense only called the defendant, who swore up and down that they were only for personal use (we're not in a medical marijuana state), and the defendant pretty much begged for mercy. I swear at this point one of my co-juror's started to tear up. Final arguments came and went, and then the Judge, the last arbiter of law said (paraphrasing here) that we were only to determine if he possessed the plants, and if so, to find him guilty.
We got back to the jury room and as I'm told we're not supposed to do, but always gets done regardless, we took a vote. 11-1. IANAL but I believed without knowing that if I gave my real reason for not wanting to convict that I'd be replaced (we had 2 alternates). I've never had to choose my wording so carefully, meanwhile the rest of the Jury kept saying things like : "the judge said we had to vote guilty" and "It doesn't matter if I think he did anything wrong, the judge said he did wrong" (that last one, I SWEAR TO GOD, was uttered word for word, i will never forget a syllable). It took 2 hours of carefully worded analogies to sway 1 other to my side, from there we got to 3 in 10 minutes, at 4, the whole room switched. Let me say that again, at 4 ppl, the remaining 8 switched over, not out of a sense of civic duty, but because they were tired and wanted to go home. WITH A MAN'S LIFE IN THE BALANCE.
When we returned our verdict, the judge didn't look at what the foreman wrote (he opened it, looked at its general direction and refolded it), when the foreman not guilty, the Judge damn near fell out of his chair, the DA did a real life triple take, and the defense attorney looked like a deer in headlights. The point is that all 3 professionals INCLUDING the defense attorney, were shocked that the jury failed to rubber stamp guilty on this guy.
After we were relieved 4 of the other jurors came to me and admitted thru conversation that they smoked pot and didn't want to vote guilty at all, but thought they had to because the judge had told them to. As they were talking, all I could think was, "So this is how democracy ends, with sheep"
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Re:Where do they keep finding 12 morons? (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting - it sounds like what the judge did was correct - he instructed the jury on what the law was, that is that possession of the drug made the defendant guilty. What came out of the jury room was jury nullification (nullification of the law), that is the jury declared innocence despite the law. Supposedly this is quite a rare event.
There is a long history of jury nullification, some of it quite ugly during periods where racial discrimination was the way things were.
This one of the most controversial areas of law, and an area that all citizens who go to serve on juries should be aware of because it WONT be brought up in the courtroom. However the roots of it go very deep into English Common Law, and because the court cannot punish the jury for its verdicts and we have protection against double jeopardy, jury nullification is in fact a power of any jury.
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You can KILL someone with this... (Score:5, Interesting)
...Imagine someone hating someone else (yes - that happens)
that someone gets an idea based on White's misfortune:
1) Send some kiddie porn images (or just family pictures of naked kids) to someone you hate
2) Do it repeatedly a few times, just to make sure they land on his harddisk
3) Secretly tip the Feds that he downloads child porn or has an interest in naked kids
The feds seizes his harddisk, he says someone anonymous sent it to him, but it doesn't help him - because it could be a child porn ring - which he "perhaps" is a part of, and they found them deleted on his harddisk. He's basically screwed! You just killed a man.
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Re:FBI bait? (Score:5, Interesting)
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