That guy who harmlessly made a YouTube video involving children? Obviously, he couldn’t actually be convicted of making child pornography, but that didn’t stop prosecutors from bullying him into pleading guilty and taking punishment for a crime that doesn’t exist:
under a plea deal, Emory pled no contest to “unlawful posting of an Internet message with aggravating circumstances”; Yesterday he was sentenced to 60 days in jail, three years probation and forbidden from contact all kids under 17. Parents are pissed that the sentence is too lenient. Because any crime involving kids and the Internet should automatically result in the death penalty.
“Unlawful posting of an Internet message with aggravating circumstances”? If that sounds like a crime they just made up so they could charge him with something, that’s probably because it is. At least he’s not on the sex offender registry? [Gawker]
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Was Pedobear his defense lawyer?
…and typical of lawyers, he fucked his client.
Sadly, after the former head of the Washington State Bar Association did that, they made it against the code of ethics. Now I don't even know why I practice any more.
I worked in my dad's office (he does a lot of ad litem stuff) until the day I found myself asking a magistrate Why don't you just force her to get sterilised?
Did this video involve candy and some sort of van?
and a right wing christian zealot, an empty water bottle, and a playground?
Which reminds me of the Sarah Silverman program, where they had an episode that showed that owning a van made you into a pedophile.
“Unlawful posting of an Internet message with aggravating circumstances”?
Isn't that every teabagger posting/video/message/tweet ever posted?
Will he get the Pee Wee Herman Memorial Brown Paper Bag Award from NAMBLA?
It's not like there are any more pressing problems the authorities should be giving their attention to these days.
Yeah, especially in fucking Michigan.
HOLY SHIT, every one of us is a hardened criminal now.
Is that what the aggravating circumstance was? It made these dooshbags hard?
"Internet message with aggravating circumstances"
Aggravating circumstances? As in "Life in these United States?" Obviously these people have never visited this site.
"Life in these United States" sounds like a warm, fuzzy page in Readers' Digest.
“Unlawful posting of an Internet message with aggravating circumstances”
Um, what?
SPEAK ENGLISH!!
I think the more technical definition of the charge is "we just made this shit up to nail folks whose actions we find personally offensive/vulgar."
Good to see prosecutors browbeating people who have committed no crime whatsoever because they offend the prudes.
Jack, Ken,, you might be next,,,, have any last message for your followers here?
"Rollo . . . Tomassi . . . heh heh heh heh . . ."
Is there more to that or am I supposed to guess?
They're not using that one call on the likes of us. They're calling someone who can plead them out.
Isn't there a section in the Constitution that bans passing bullshit laws after the fact to catch people that have done something you don't like?
If this harmless shit rates 60 days then Charlie Crist owes David Byrne 30 years.
So this guy can't be around kids anymore but all those Republicans are still allowed underage interns?
Orwell must be rolling in his grave that he failed to include this plot twist in 1984.
You mean the "fuck, I still didn't really do anything wrong!" plot twist?
“Unlawful posting of an Internet message with aggravating circumstances”
In English: "Don't piss off the Christianist Fucktards or you'll go to jail. Got it? Right."
Veritas videos are aggravating. Does this mean we get to prosecute James O'Keeffe now?
If you can find him in a video with children around somewhere and dub sex-related words over him when his lips move, then he will be guilty of child porn! Or you will. Hard to say, since they'll be invoking fake laws to punish someone for nonexistent crimes.
Well if that CNN reporter he planned to invite to his rape boat hadn't been warned of his plans that could have gotten him actual jail time.
Won't somebody please think of the children! – M. Flanders
Humorless pedant and giant nerd that I am, I cannot resist pointing out that that is Helen Lovejoy's catchphrase. </comicbookguy>
The next case for this court? Convicting Henry Thomas and Drew Barrymore for not reporting an illegal alien to the INS.
Hey, I do post! So there! … D'oh!
Wait, kids can't be around this guy?! How do I get me one of those? That would make riding the metro so much easier! "Sorry, you little snot-nosed buggers, you can't come within 50 feet of me or you're getting arrested!" Gawd, that would be so awesome!
So if anyone takes — for instance — a speech by some fucked-up evangelical minister describing homosexuality (there must be tons of them out there) in the most lurid ways and mashes it up with images of children laughing, they've committed a crime? Could we possibly get the minister convicted too, beyond the person who made the mashup? I mean, he wouldn't've done anything wrong either, so why not, right?
And yet the parents of the racist fucktard kid walk free.
edit: Oh, hey thanks, trollfister!
Got you covered.
I sure wish my life were so hollow and joyless that I could spend my day downfisting every comment on a blog I don't like just to feel a tiny scrap of meaningless accomplishment.
Oh, wait. No, I don't. That's fucking pathetic.
He told his friends he starts from the end. Carry on.
Jesus. Who the fuck did he have for a lawyer???
Haha. If you read the Times article, the defense lawyer was a guy the prosecutor had busted for cocaine possession some years before.
Fucking America. The inadequate access to the law is every bit as awful as inadequate access to health care.
Unlawful posting of an Internet message with aggravating circumstances
I'm gonna miss all of you.
3 years probation = 3 years that this dude does not have the right of free speech wrt this legal atrocity. But yeah, at least his life isn't completely ruined.
At step 2.
Reminds me of the time a guy in Fairfax was bullied into taking a year jail sentance on a crime that only had a max penalty of $500. He spent four months in jail before I hit the county with a habeas corpus; he was out in three hours. Sued the defense lawyer; his legal mal counsel screamed at me in after a deposition that if my case was so good, why wasn't I suing the judge and prosecutor, since they screwed up, too. I reminded him that they weren't paid by the poor shlub that was in the can for 129 days.
His crime? Fell in love with a woman and called her a few dozen times after they broke up. "Ringing the telephones with the intent to annoy." The prank phone call statute.
Holy crap. Bart Simpson woulda got the chair with those guys defending him.
Oh shit, that's illegal? Sorry ladies.
May this incident serve as a simple reminder to anyone with any shred of creativity or brain power left in Middle America: Move to NY, LA, or SF as fast as you can.
Remember, he also did actually commit a crime when he broke into Sen. Landrieu's office and tried to tap her phones – and he only got probation for it. The elite don't have to play by the same rules as the rest of us.
So editing a video to imply criminal behavior is now an actual offense.
This is bad news for O'Keefe and Breitbart.
OBJECTION! Clearly, counsel is forgetting the long-standing obvious precedents displayed in IOKIYAR vs. Logic!
Good grief!
HE WAS A WAITER AT APPLEBEES.
He should be waterboarded with the Bourbon Street Chicken and Shrimp.
And a side salad…
Wait until they get ahold of that J. Crew photographer!
Didn't David Cross do this shit in the 90s? I love me some David Cross Evil Comedy.
We are in big trouble, commentariat.
At least he’s not on the sex offender registry?
No, but he is now on the Unlawful Posting of an Internet Message registry.
Are. You. Shitting. Me.?
Three months in the county for an obviously made-up charge, based on a tasteless but victimless internet posting.
Seriously, Wonkers, we're next.
…and yet Kobe Bryant walks the streets a free man…
…and yet James Inhofe walks the streets a free man…
getting a tony.
god. children.
bored now.
This was over in Michigan's "Jesus County" as I like to call West Michigan. It's basically Nashville meets Great Lakes, minus the music and warm temperatures, and replacing the Baptists and Methodists with ultra-staid Reformed Church Dutch people.
Coincidentally, Governor Rick "Dicktator/Ricktator" Snyder signed into a law here in Michigan on Monday that removes most involved in "Romeo & Juliet" crimes (i.e. teen sex) from the sex offender registry.
More seriously, I'd not be surprised to see this happen anywhere in this country with how we've come to fetishizing childhood, with the ultimate irony being, of course, those that push these laws pass other laws that are simply horrible for women and children.
WIN
Well, hell, it's not like he did something really harmful like painting the kids' toenails pink.
Look under your seats… You go to jail! And you go to jail! And you go to jail!
If this results in Judd Apatow going to prison for the crimes of Knocked-up & Funny People, then I say, Hear!
Has anyone proved those kids aren't anchor babies? get Gohmert on the appeal
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