The Des Moines Register reports that Johnson County (IA)District Judge Kristin Hobbs has refused to dismiss the case of David Hodges, 32, of Iowa City, for viewing pornography in the Hardin Library on the health sciences campus of the U. of Iowa. The defendents lawyer has said that “Hodges neither copied nor saved any information, and therefore did not knowingly possess it”.
What say you all?
What say you all?
Well, I say: If you’ve never opened any cans of worms your life must be awfully dull (–Don Alt).
Of course, having a fiduciary obligation to his client, the counsel for the defense is going to try every argument he can no matter how cockamamie it appears prima facie. However, I’d say the test of whether he knowingly possessed the pornography or not is if he deliberately accessed the site.
I will also point out that pornography is not illegal; it is material that is proscribably obscene that is illegal, and to have material deemed such it is necessary to try it in court FIRST! Only if it is condemned as obscene by the standards of the community (of Des Moines) can possession be indictable within that jurisdiction.
not enough info
Public computer? Is he staff? Not a lot of details here but in trying to find more I come to the question: what’s wrong with the University of Iowa?
Re:What say you all?
Um, it says he was looking at child pronography, which is illegal, no?
Re:What say you all?
If you would have taken the time to have actually read the article, you’d have seen that the charges against him deal with possessing child pornography. Child pornography is illegal, if they are actually minors.
Of course he posessed it.
I don’t think that there is any disagreement that he posessed it. The question is did he knowingly possess it.
There is one site on the Internet that is quite popular which shows some very strange man doing something best left to your local colo-rectal surgeon. I have received the link in email from other people I know (assuming it was a viral and that my correspondents had not lost their minds). I had read of it before and I did not open these email links (I generally don’t anyways).
If this person had one, perhaps two illegal images at the most I could buy an unknowing posession defense, but frankly I doubt it. However it was apparently a public computer (public defender :: public computer, I know it is a leap but I made it).
However there is sufficient case law to demonstrate that the mere viewing is possession.
More importantly why can’t as Greg mentioned can’t they keep the perverts in line in Iowa?
Re:What say you all?
The word “child” does not appear in the description of the issue that Birdie wrote. I would probably have been more inclined to read the Register article if it had.
Re:What say you all?
I would probably have been more inclined to read the Register article if it had.
But you’ll still make a three paragraph comment without reading the original article? You make me smile.
Re:What say you all?
I wasn’t commenting on the article at all, I was commenting on what Birdie wrote. You’re inability to properly differentiate makes me laugh.