posted
Should he have been charged with a crime? Now forget what your feelings are about public officials or pornography. This was a search warrant for something else and not what he was charged with:
Former Ohio County Official Maintains Guilty Plea in Obscenity Case
CLEVELAND — A former Ohio public official has decided to maintain his guilty plea in a federal obscenity case that deals with adult pornography, not child porn. Patrick J. O'Malley, 50, used to be the county recorder for Cuyahoga until a 2004 investigation. Officials obtained a search warrant and entered his home as part of divorce proceedings between O'Malley and his wife.
At the time, officials said they were looking for child porn on O'Malley's computer. They found pornography, but it involved only adults.
An official report said that the adult content found on O'Malley's compute "portrays a sadistic or masochistic conduct or other depictions of violence."
O'Malley's attorney, Ian Friedman, said that the adult content found on O'Malley's computer "crosses the line."
Free Speech Coalition Chairman Jeffrey Douglas told XBIZ that this case shouldn't have much affect on the adult industry.
"By no means should anyone derive from this that the federal government has an agenda against BDSM," he said, adding that the federal government had pursued "very few" prosecutions against content in the BDSM or sado-masochistic genre.
At the same time, Douglas lamented O'Malley's guilty plea.
"It's a tragedy for [O'Malley]," Douglas said. "Personal possession of obscene material is not a crime. Even assuming that the material was exceptional in some way, it is very defensible."
Douglas noted that typically a defendant has to sell or transport obscene material in order for an action to be deemed a federal offense. Online reports indicate no such behavior by O'Malley.
U.S. District Judge David Dowd gave O'Malley the chance to change his initial guilty plea because Dowd had not told O'Malley everything about his initial plea agreement. O'Malley decided to keep the same plea.
The judge will hand down O'Malley's sentence on Oct. 3 in Akron, Ohio. When sentenced, O'Malley faces anywhere from six to 18 months in prison.
According to a local news report, O'Malley has since taken a job at an insurance company.
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Ernesto "Che" Guevara de la Serna Posts: 4669 | Registered: Mar 2004
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jeez...I cain't tell who's for what in that piece.
e.g., who said this: ""By no means should anyone derive from this that the federal government has an agenda against BDSM," he said, adding that the federal government had pursued "very few" prosecutions against content in the BDSM or sado-masochistic genre."
posted
I saw Trump on TV today--he says now is a great time to buy real estate. The lil TV-girl tried to get a real answer, but he steamrolled her.
She asked how a regular person might do that...and ran into the Vegas version of Texas Hold 'Em. His "advice" was to go to the banks and dictate terms...
yah, I imagine bank-folk are about nutty...or else, they grew up in the biz
quote:Originally posted by T e x: jeez...I cain't tell who's for what in that piece.
e.g., who said this: ""By no means should anyone derive from this that the federal government has an agenda against BDSM," he said, adding that the federal government had pursued "very few" prosecutions against content in the BDSM or sado-masochistic genre."
lol, was that a spokesperson for the fedzzz?
Free Speech Coalition President Jeffrey Douglas said that Tex... in all seriousness the warrant was for child porn and he had regular porn on his computer in the privacy of his home... I don't see where the crime is? ...
-------------------- Let the world change you... And you can change the world.
Ernesto "Che" Guevara de la Serna Posts: 4669 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Once upon a time years ago, a friend had two boys, a 3 year old and an 18 month old. On a warm spring day, the two boys were splashing about in a plastic wading pool and their shorts ended up beside the pool as they played splash brother. A camera came out and pictures were taken of the boys playing.
Some one that must have seen the pictures couldn't manage to see the fun of two cute tykes completely engrossed in play.
Cops showed up demanding the pictures.
To avoid being accused of possessing child pornography (and god only knows what other charges after things got nasty) , my friend agreed to destroy the pictures.
There MUST be a far more specific description of exactly what is and what isn't child pornography.
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
But Bdgee this isn't about child pornography per say... this has to do if a warrant says specifically what the cops are suppose to search for but do not find it and find something else that isn't really illegal but the homeowner is charged anyway with some other crime that isn't a crime because what he possesses is legal...
In this case child pornography is what they were looking for but there was none... instead they found regular ADULT pornography... and he was charged with obscenity etc... he's not the producer of the material nor a distributor... it's not illegal to possess adult pornography... obscenity laws in whichever jurisdiction mostly deals with producing and distributing and not the private citizen possessing it...
This case could of been about anything else in our society such as guns, drugs, stolen property etc... So that is why i am saying forget about the pornography aspect of it... it's about when law enforcement go over their bounds and ignore what a warrant says and what the law says...
-------------------- Let the world change you... And you can change the world.
Ernesto "Che" Guevara de la Serna Posts: 4669 | Registered: Mar 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Machiavelli: But Bdgee this isn't about child pornography per say... this has to do if a warrant says specifically what the cops are suppose to search for but do not find it and find something else that isn't really illegal but the homeowner is charged anyway with some other crime that isn't a crime because what he possesses is legal...
In this case child pornography is what they were looking for but there was none... instead they found regular ADULT pornography... and he was charged with obscenity etc... he's not the producer of the material nor a distributor... it's not illegal to possess adult pornography... obscenity laws in whichever jurisdiction mostly deals with producing and distributing and not the private citizen possessing it...
This case could of been about anything else in our society such as guns, drugs, stolen property etc... So that is why i am saying forget about the pornography aspect of it... it's about when law enforcement go over their bounds and ignore what a warrant says and what the law says...
Mach, you miss the point all together. The situation I presented was a case where common parental pride and healthy family fun became construed as something entirely different.
My point in posting it was twofold:
First, law enforcement (and not law enforcement alone) goes to excesses when they can declare something is about child pornography, believing (too often correctly), that the public will turn its head the other way and they can act as they darn well please and perform as a punishing arm of government, because "child pornography" is so much more horrible than any "normal crime".
Second, supposedly, we have restrictions on the actions of the police to assure they are not acting via personal prejudices and bias (whether theirs or some other person's). The Constitution specifies that they must not be imposing their powers without specific and reasonable information as to what crime is involved. When they have the horrifying "child pornography" to lean on, all that is ignored and even with the evidence showing there was none, they eagerly find other reasons to justify their attack on innocent persons.
If we do not do a better job of defining what these horrifying crimes are, it is easy for the authorities to use the terminology to get away with serious infractions of what the Constitution intends.
(It is like the reports you often read in the paper on another emotionally charges crime terminology...."drugs". Says the report in the paper, "Although no drugs or related paraphernalia were recovered, among the items confiscated were a number of weapons including knives and a shotgun." They know they can get away with taking legally ownd guns and knives, because the warrant, though faulty, said "drugs". )
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Mach, isn't there a 'plain sight' rule when it comes to serving a warrant? I seem to recall that if in the serving of a warrant (regardless of the root justification) the officers discover proof of any other crime, providing they didn't go beyond the scope of the original warrant, they can act on said proof.
For instance, if officers are issued a search warrant for a vehicle in connection with a missing child (vehicle of one of the parents\neighbors, whatever). While searching the car they find several kilos of cocaine in the trunk. The owner would invariably be arrested for the drugs regardless of whether evidence related to the kidnapping was discovered.
In this case, they were searching the computer for child pornography. In the process of said search, they discovered he had 'obscene' (legally speaking) material and he was thus charged for it and not for the child porno as no evidence of such was apparently found.
Posts: 1802 | From: Utah | Registered: Mar 2008
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quote:Originally posted by SeekingFreedom: Mach, isn't there a 'plain sight' rule when it comes to serving a warrant? I seem to recall that if in the serving of a warrant (regardless of the root justification) the officers discover proof of any other crime, providing they didn't go beyond the scope of the original warrant, they can act on said proof.
For instance, if officers are issued a search warrant for a vehicle in connection with a missing child (vehicle of one of the parents\neighbors, whatever). While searching the car they find several kilos of cocaine in the trunk. The owner would invariably be arrested for the drugs regardless of whether evidence related to the kidnapping was discovered.
In this case, they were searching the computer for child pornography. In the process of said search, they discovered he had 'obscene' (legally speaking) material and he was thus charged for it and not for the child porno as no evidence of such was apparently found.
There is probably a plain sight rule but i suppose that depends if it's for local , state or federal. But anyways that is not the point if what they see in plain sight is not illegal. Like i said he's not a producer nor distributor of obscene material. He possessed something that is legal for a private citizen. Had he gone to trial he would of prevailed but what happens with too many people they get intimidated by the Gov't and/or the costs of a trial so they give in, instead of fighting the charge that everyone knows is a trumped up charge.
-------------------- Let the world change you... And you can change the world.
Ernesto "Che" Guevara de la Serna Posts: 4669 | Registered: Mar 2004
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