Teen prosecuted as adult for having naked images – of himself – on phone

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/20/teen-prosecuted-naked-images-himself-phone-selfies

by planetjones • 11 years ago

66 60 11 years ago

theguardian.com

paublyrne• 11 years ago

You almost want to laugh. This sounds like a story out of the Onion.

Unfortunately it is not.

rsp1984• 11 years ago

There's a word for that: "Kafkaesque". I rarely find it more appropriate.

iamcurious• 11 years ago

I no longer can tell when I'm reading the guardian from when I'm reading the onion without looking at the URL.

weddpros3• 11 years ago

"Justice" is the only thing I'm scared of, because of the "".

Laws are made to protect children, and "Justice" abuse those laws against... children.

"Justice" is just an administration today, devoid of logic and intelligence.

fingerprinter• 11 years ago

Can a legal expert please explain to me how this can even happen? Shouldn't a judge somewhere be able to take one look at this and realize the ridiculousness of the whole thing and throw it out?

bbanyc• 11 years ago

Not a legal expert by any means, but my guess is: the authorities disapprove of teens sexting, there's no specific law against sexting (and probably no constitutional way to ban it), but the child pornography laws can be stretched to extend to it. Thus although the prosecution is facially absurd, everyone involved knows what's "really" being prosecuted here and is okay with it.

tsotha6• 11 years ago

Judges aren't supposed to pick and choose which laws get enforced - you can't have a system where the legislature passes a law and rest of the government says "Nah, we don't like that one."

What needs to happen is 1) the legislature needs to change the law to include exceptions where appropriate and 2) the voters in that area need to take this case into consideration when the prosecutor comes up for reelection.

JoeAltmaier• 11 years ago

Where to begin. Judges don't enforce laws. The legislature passing laws and the executive deciding which to enforce is part of the design of checks and balances.

chrismcb2• 11 years ago

That is exactly how government works. The legislative branch can veto laws. And the judicial branch can over turn laws that are deemed illegal. There are a couple of absurdities in this case. One is a person is both a child and an adult. Another us it is perfectly legal fir two people (or one person) to see each other naked, in person. But not in a picture.

johnsea3• 11 years ago

What I don't understand is, that the two young persons didn't choose to say: f*uck you, stupid law, we won't strike a plea. You.are.nuts!

Is the pressure in the US that strong that a sane person 'just has to do this'?

minimaxir4• 11 years ago

While the case may be incredibly weak, the defendant may still be unable to fight it due to other factors (most notably cost and time), and therefore take the plea instead. Lawyers are expensive everywhere.

Generally, refusing a plea deal for ideological reasons is not a smart legal strategy.

leaveyou2• 11 years ago

Why are lawyers expensive everywhere ? Demand and supply does not apply to them ?

johnsea3• 11 years ago

Aren't there lawyers without cost? (German: Pflichtverteidiger - maybe: assigned counsel). How is a 16 year old supposed to pay for a lawyer?

jeffmould• 11 years ago

Unfortunately the US legal system is not defendant friendly. While the US claims "innocent until proven guilty" our legal system is structured opposite. The other, larger in my opinion, problem is that the focus has gone from using common sense to zero tolerance. This case is a prime example. I am not by any means support child pornography, but at the same time the sex offender laws in the US are out of control. Take for example a friend of mine who was drunk and got peeing in front of car on a dark street. A cop just happened to see him and he was subsequently arrested, charged, and convicted of indecent exposure. Because of the conviction he had to register as a sex offender. The US sex offender registry makes no distinction though between the individual caught peeing in the alley and the person who has molested hundreds of kids. The bigger issue is that no politician will touch correcting the situation for fear of being labeled as support child pornography. So while everyone knows the system is screwed up, and people continued to be punished harshly because of it, nothing will change because everyone is so scared to talk about the problem in the first place.

There are many other cases, outside of sex offenses, where individuals who may be guilty of a lesser crime take a plea deal to a larger crime to avoid the cost, time, and most importantly uncertainty associated with going to trial. I think, at least with sex offenses, we will see in the future a shift in dealing with the problem though. It is somewhat like drugs. In the early 1980s Reagan was hard-nosed on the war on drugs. He enacted stiff penalties and encouraged three strike laws. This sent a lot of people to jail for a long time on charges that were otherwise non-offenses. You see people in California serving life sentences for having three charges of possession of marijuana. Today though as a younger generation comes into power, and people are slowly changing their views on marijuana, we are seeing a shift in punishment for the same crimes. I predict that at some point there will be tipping point with crimes like this article highlight where people will say enough is enough we need to fix this problem. Until then though, you are going to see more and more articles like this.

johnsea3• 11 years ago

Thanks for explaining.

bsimpson• 11 years ago

I imagine there's also a risk:reward calculation. As much as it would suck to plead this out, the penalty is 30 hours of community service and not carrying a phone for a year. The alternative carries a penalty of registering as a sex offender, the legal equivalent of a scarlet letter. That can have serious repercussions on your adult life.

So, the calculus is: swallow some pride and be mildly inconvenienced for a year, or fight for justice and hope you don't ruin your life in the process.

andybak• 11 years ago

How does every single person involved in faciliating this case not wake up every morning and think "My entire live is an absurd joke".

I've always been fascinated with the concept of institutional insanity - where a group of people can behave rationally but the combined effect of their behaviour is insane. It's possible there's some kind of 'gridlock' whereby it's impossible (or even damaging) for any individual involved to try and resist.

It's a milder form of the level of insanity you see within totalitarian states. Reading this echos some of the bizarre logic I read coming from guards at Cambodia's horrific S21. The penalty for resisting (or merely lack of enthusiasm for enabling) was immediate and horrific and would have taken superhuman courage. And it would have most likely made no difference.

In this case - the penalty for speaking out is probably nothing worse than damage to one's career.

I'd love to know how many people involved in this at any level harbour doubts without acting upon them.

I'd like to remind people that this is destroying the lives of two young people. Maybe not beyond repair but possibly sending them on a different course than before and probably not a better one.

Zigurd• 11 years ago

Because we haven't actively made their life an absurd joke. While there is a lot to be said against internet mobs, it's a pretty mild step to make sure that the individuals involved in these travesties are identified, covered by the press, and made immortal in the internet halls of shame.

They may say "we followed procedure" but it is on them to prove that "procedure" admits no common sense, because, otherwise, it's a failure of their sense and discretion.

GeorgeOrr• 11 years ago

This sort of thing has to be remembered next time you hear that prosecutors need broadly worded statutes to have the tools to go after the bad guys.

When people bring up criticisms of laws as over-broad, I often hear that prosecutorial discretion will keep such abuses from happening. People who suggest that the law as written will result in such injustice are often ridiculed for imagining that any prosecutor would act that way, or any Judge allow it.

Turns out, anyone suggesting that even the most absurd interpretations are not possible are the ones who should be ridiculed.

Remember this the next time someone proposes a law, no matter how well intentioned, and even if it happens to advance a cause you care about. The abuses will happen, and how will you feel about that cost if you are the subject of those abuses.

sarciszewski• 11 years ago

Turns out, anyone suggesting that even the most absurd interpretations are not possible are the ones who should be ridiculed.

Yep. See also: the CFAA.

discardorama• 11 years ago

Next up: teen accused of being a peeping tom for looking at himself in the mirror after a shower.

djent2• 11 years ago

So much for the right to face your accuser - was there a mirror in the courtroom for him to look into?

minimaxir4• 11 years ago

From the linked article:

The Fayetteville, NC 17-year-old, Cormega Copening, faced five charges of sexual exploitation after police found the photos while searching his phone in an unrelated incident at his school last fall.

There is a third-party accuser.

djent2• 11 years ago

From the title:

Teen prosecuted as adult for having naked images – of himself

The prosecutor is prosecuting on behalf of the very person who is also supposedly the perpetrator. Do you seriously think our founding fathers intended for "The People" v. Copening to be a replacement for Copening v. Copening?

informatimago• 11 years ago

This is just the exact same thing as the Ahmed Mohamed clock.

Anybody who retain some sanity should leave the USA ASAP.

minimaxir4• 11 years ago

No?

That incident was caused by unfortunate racial stereotyping; this is caused by a literal interpretation of the letter of the law that hasn't caught up with the times.

jMyles2• 11 years ago

You are right; they are opposites in this way.

However, they share the thread of being implementations of unsustainable zero tolerance.

mobiplayer• 11 years ago

You didn't get it.

This happens because the US is turning into a police state where everyone thinks they've got the right and duty to destroy someone else's live if they don't like something about them (race, religion, sexual life, ...), and the authorities are not only OK with that but actively encourage it to promote constant fear amidst population. If they can charge you with anything at any time and destroy your life, you're going to be a good sheep.

jschwartzi• 11 years ago

I just look at stuff like this as a reminder that there's a hard road ahead of us if we want the US to be the land of the free again.

kaonashi2• 11 years ago

Usually these types of things are about punishing interracial relationships.

sigma20153• 11 years ago

both the guy and the gf are black - interestingly this is not mentioned in the text.

kaonashi2• 11 years ago

I guess it's more about punishing black male sexuality in this case.

sigma20153• 11 years ago

What the article does not mention is that the guy and his gf are black ...

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3223533/North-Caroli...]

Now one might righfully argue that this case is not just ludicrous but also racist.

sigma20153• 11 years ago

why the downvote?

stared• 11 years ago

I did't downvote, but I guess it's for implying (without any other data or statistics) that if something bad happens to a member of a group X, then it is an act of prejudice against this group.

MarkMc• 11 years ago

Because you haven't cited enough evidence to support the charge of racism.

dtech2• 11 years ago

Except this happens a lot more, independent of race.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/07/police-drop-plans...

http://www.digitaltrends.com/photography/bizarre-sexting-cas...

http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/underage-sexting-isnt-ru...

https://aclu-wa.org/blog/sexting-and-law-press-send-turn-tee...

tsotha6• 11 years ago

Now one might righfully argue that this case is not just ludicrous but also racist.

Purely based on the fact the defendant and his girlfriend are black? No, I think not.

welly• 11 years ago

No, one might not rightfully argue this case is racist, based on the evidence provided.

What, in the story, suggests to you that this case is racist?

briandear• 11 years ago

Racist? A black defendant doesn't make a case racist. You have to prove that they were charged because of their race. Making a race charge is nonsense.

aresant• 11 years ago

Story I expected based on headline and the outraged HN comments: "guy takes nude selfies and is charged with crime."

Actual story "guy is charged with having nude images of underage girlfriend on his phone, prosecutors inflate charges to force settlement by reaching to include his own nude photos".

Still stupid. But way less black and white.

jarfil2• 11 years ago

The other part of the story is: "girlfriend also gets charged with having selfies of herself"

They both got charged as adults for exploiting themselves as minors to share the pics with each other.

dtech2• 11 years ago

Girl was also charged but took a plea deal.

Also these people could legally have sex with each other, but apparently aren't allowed to have nude pictures of each other or themselves.

jarfil2• 11 years ago

This is what I love about this case:

Let it be known that Brianna Denison, Fayetteville, North Carolina, by order of the court won't have a cellphone with her to call for help if someone abducts her and tries to rape her.

Very smart, yessir.

gozo• 11 years ago

Just having your phone searched and the police looking at pictures of you and your girlfriend naked seems like enough of a violation in itself.

jzd• 11 years ago

North Carolina. Black people. Got it

soneil• 11 years ago

I've said this before elsewhere, but one concern with cases like this is that it means sex offender registries are becoming more and more useless.

When people end up having to register because of 'stupid' crimes like this - either they stand the chance of being persecuted as a sexual offender for the rest of their lives. Or the registry itself becomes increasingly useless as we start to assume people are there for peeing in the wrong place.