As my colleague Tim Lynch pointed out in this post, the Third Circuit recently upheld an injunction against a prosecutor who threatened charges against teenagers who engaged in “sexting.” A conviction would have turned these minors into registered sex offenders for flirting via cellphone. Professor Eugene Volokh has more on the decision.
“Sexting” is sending an explicit photo of yourself to your significant other, and is an increasingly common occurrence with high school–aged teens. It’s dumb — those digits don’t ever go away, and they can come back to embarrass you — but it shouldn’t make you a sex offender.
Unfortunately, the laws don’t reflect this sensible distinction between poor teenage judgment (but I repeat myself) and intentional criminality. I don’t think this guy is a threat to society, but he’s a registered sex offender now.
Even staunch conservative Andy McCarthy expressed concern about the heavy mandatory minimums for possession of child pornography over at The Corner. First-time offenders can get 15-year minimum sentences, more than some of the mobsters that McCarthy prosecuted as an assistant U.S. attorney. As McCarthy puts it:
Read the rest of this post →I think that’s nuts. And mind you, compared to the average person (and even the average prosecutor), I am Atilla the Hun: I would not have the slightest problem imposing capital punishment on the people who actually produce and “perform” in these depictions in which young children are sexually abused…
But the mandatory minimums have to be sensible — “Doing it for the children” is not a rationale for failing to distinguish the truly evil from the venial.