16-year-old A. and her 17-year-old boyfriend J. took risque photos of the two of them cavorting and emailed them from A.’s home computer to J’s email account. “Neither teen showed the photographs to anyone else.” The photos nonetheless somehow came to the attention of Florida police, both teens were prosecuted on child porongarphy* charges, and by a 2-1 vote, a Florida appeals court in January dismissed A.’s constitutional claim (Declan McCullagh, CNET/News.com, Feb. 9). Discussion: Lippard Blog, Feb. 10. (* = deliberate misspelling)
“Teens prosecuted for racy photos”
16-year-old A. and her 17-year-old boyfriend J. took risque photos of the two of them cavorting and emailed them from A.’s home computer to J’s email account. “Neither teen showed the photographs to anyone else.” The photos nonetheless somehow came to the attention of Florida police, both teens were prosecuted on child porongarphy* charges, and […]
5 Comments
Yet another ridiculous case of laws poorly thought out and badly enforced, with the added bonus of being on a subject where our laws are from a time when certain behaviours were still viwed as wrong (whether one agrees with the changes or not, one cannot disagree that th government is suggesting, aiding, abetting, and condoning the very behaviour it then prosecutes: schools giv out condoms, take girls for abortions in some cases, etc, while the police are trying to arrest people for same).
One last point: anyone taking bets on whether there would have ben proscution if the age/gender rlationship were reversed (she 17, he 16)?
It is the judge’s assertion that the photos sent from one individual to another could then leave the private confines of these two individuals and become public, this is the wrong application of justice.
Orwell would shed a tear were he around for this one.
Because the damage to the kids from seeing eachother naked, or even from other kids seeing them naked, is worse than the damage from their being convicted of a sex offense.
Welcome to bizarro-world, let me grow my goatee.
FYI – Overlawyered is now the first search result returned by Google for the term “porongarphy”. I suspect it’s safe to assume that’s preferable to Overlawyered being the first result for the correct spelling.