Tuesday, November 13, 2012, by Amanda Jones
\nA lawyer in Ohio must pay $300,000 to the families of two girls whose picture he used to create images that looked like child pornography.\u00a0 Dean Boland, an attorney and self-proclaimed computer expert, used the images of two children to create sexually explicit photos that he subsequently presented while testifying as an expert witness.\u00a0 His reasoning for creating the photos was to show the over breadth (in his opinion) of the current child pornography laws.<\/p>\n
Boland maintained there was no harm to the children, stating<\/a> that the parents are \u201cinsisting I owe them hundreds of thousands of dollars for harm these children don\u2019t even know is going on,\u201d the court disagreed.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
According to the opinion<\/a> from the Sixth Circuit, the incident began in 2004 when Boland downloaded images of two identifiable minor females, ages five and six.\u00a0 Boland then, using his computer skills, morphed the pictures to show the two girls in sexually explicit situations.\u00a0 In one picture, the minor\u2019s face was morphed onto the face of an adult woman performing sexual acts with two men.\u00a0 In the second photo, the original image showed the young girl eating a doughnut and Boland altered the photo so that the doughnut appeared to be a penis.\u00a0
\nBoland then used these images on at least three occasions when giving expert testimony related to child pornography.\u00a0 Boland would show the original, innocent images of the young girls and then compared these images to the digitally altered photos.\u00a0 He used this method to support his testimony that it would be \u201cimpossible for a person who did not participate in the creation of the image to know [the child is] an actual minor.\u201d\u00a0
\nRegardless of his motive, the FBI caught wind of what Boland was doing and took action.\u00a0 Boland\u2019s house was searched and files were seized from his computer, leading to his admission of violating a federal law<\/a> which prohibits a person from knowingly possessing any visual depiction which is \u201cor appears to be, of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct.\u201d
\nSubsequently, the families of the two minor females filed civil suit against Boland for damages related to the use of the minors\u2019 photos.\u00a0 While Boland maintained there was no harm to the children, stating<\/a> that the parents are \u201cinsisting I owe them hundreds of thousands of dollars for harm these children don\u2019t even know is going on,\u201d the court disagreed.\u00a0 The Sixth Circuit affirmed the district court\u2019s determination of damages, relying on 18 U.S.C. \u00a7\u00a7 2252A(f) and 2255, awarding each family $150,000, the minimum amount set forth by the statute<\/a>.
\nThis decision is not a surprise.\u00a0 In New York v. Ferber<\/em><\/a>, the Supreme Court ruled that child pornography is not a protected form of speech under the First Amendment.\u00a0 The Court reasoned that States have various interests in an outright prohibition of child pornography.\u00a0 The most pressing interest is found in \u201csafeguarding the physical and psychological well-being of a minor.\u201d\u00a0 Child pornography has subsequently been addressed in Osborne v. Ohio <\/em>and Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition<\/em>, both cases maintaining that child pornography which implicates the well-being of minor children is strictly prohibited and not protected under the First Amendment.\u00a0
\nAs noted by the Sixth Circuit Court, Boland had various other manners in which he could have gone about supporting his expert testimony other than digitally altering the photos of the minor females.\u00a0 Boland could have employed the same compare-and-contrast technique using morphed adult photos, simply explaining that the same technique could be used with photos of minors.\u00a0 This attorney exercised extremely poor judgment in creating the sexuality explicit photos of two young girls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tuesday, November 13, 2012, by Amanda Jones A lawyer in Ohio must pay $300,000 to the families of two girls whose picture he used to create images that looked like child pornography.\u00a0 Dean Boland, an attorney and self-proclaimed computer expert, used the images of two children to create sexually explicit photos that he subsequently presented …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1205"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7661,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1205\/revisions\/7661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}