The Poop on Justice

From the Los Angeles Times:

A closely watched obscenity trial in Los Angeles federal court was suspended Wednesday after the judge acknowledged maintaining his own publicly accessible website featuring sexually explicit photos and videos.

Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, granted a 48-hour stay in the obscenity trial of a Hollywood adult filmmaker after the prosecutor requested time to explore “a potential conflict of interest concerning the court having a . . . sexually explicit website with similar material to what is on trial here.”

Original DVD cover

In an interview Tuesday with The Times, Kozinski acknowledged posting sexual content on his website. Among the images on the site were a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows and a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal. He defended some of the adult content as “funny” but conceded that other postings were inappropriate.

They didn’t mention that the sexually aroused farm animal was a minor!

Kozinski is one of the nation’s highest-ranking judges and has been mentioned as a possible candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Make him sit next to Scalia. He’ll never think about sex again!

He was named chief judge of the 9th Circuit last year and is considered a judicial conservative on most issues. He was appointed to the federal bench by President Reagan in 1985.

…snip…

Tuesday evening he had told The Times that he had a clear recollection of some of the most objectionable material and that he was responsible for placing it on the Web. By Wednesday afternoon, as controversy about the website spread, Kozinski was seeking to shift responsibility, at least in part, to his adult son, Yale.

What’s worse–telling your son about your porn site or trying to blame him when you get caught? I’ve changed my mind–make him sit on Scalia’s lap!

Stephen Gillers, a New York University law professor who specializes in legal ethics and has known Kozinski for years, called him “a treasure of the federal judiciary.” Gillers said he took the judge at his word that he did not know the site was publicly available. But he said Kozinski was “seriously negligent” in allowing it to be discovered.

“The phrase ‘sober as a judge’ resonates with the American public,” Gillers said. “We don’t want them to reveal their private selves publicly. This is going to upset a lot of people.”

Y’think? And if people are upset, think how the farm animals must feel! They can’t get away fast enough!

Let’s just hope for that poor little pig’s sake that Kozinski is not into pedal-phelia!

Kozinski has a reputation as a brilliant legal mind and is seen as a champion of the 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech and expression. Several years ago, for example, after learning that appeals court administrators had placed filters on computers that denied access to pornography and other materials, Kozinski led a successful effort to have the filters removed.

The judge said it was strictly by chance that he wound up presiding over the trial of filmmaker Ira Isaacs in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

…snip…

Isaacs is on trial for distributing sexual feti$h videos, featuring acts of be$tiality and defe¢ation.

Let’s see, both the judge and Isaacs cater to a demographic that likes things on farms and defe¢ation? 😯 Well, we’ve solved the e-coli-on-the-lettuce mystery of last year!

The judge said he didn’t think any of the material on his site would qualify as obscene.

“Is it prurient? I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “I think it’s odd and interesting. It’s part of life.”

…snip…

The sexually explicit material on the site was extensive, including images of masturbati0n, public sex and contortionist sex. There was a slide show striptease featuring a transsexual, and a folder that contained a series of photos of women’s crotches in snug-fitting clothing or underwear.

…snip…

Among the sexually explicit material on his site that he defended as humorous were two photos. In one, a young man is bent over in a chair and performing fellati0 on himself. In the other, two women are sitting in what appears to be a cafe with their skirts hiked up to reveal their pubic hair and genita1ia. Behind them is a sign reading “Bush for President.”

“That is a funny joke,” Kozinski said.

The judge said he planned to delete some of the most objectionable material from his site, including the photo depicting women as cows, which he said was “degrading . . . and just gross.” He also said he planned to get rid of a graphic step-by-step pictorial in which a woman is seen shaving her pubic hair.

…snip…

The judge emphasized that he never used appeals court computers to maintain his site.

The presence of copyrighted music files on Kozinski’s site raises other issues.

More than a dozen MP3 tracks were listed, and they were neither excerpts nor used to illustrate legal opinions, which experts said might have qualified their copying as “fair use.” The artists included Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan and Weird Al Yankovic.

Uploading such files could violate civil copyright laws if friends or members of the public visited the site and downloaded the songs, according to attorneys who have litigated file-sharing cases for both copyright holders and accused infringers.

Yeah, the big problem with this guy is that some music companies might have been ripped off for a few pennies.