There is a bizarre search warrant that has been obtained by the Manassas City Police to photograph the erect penis of a 17-year-old facing felony child-pornography charges. The charges are based on the teen sending an explicit video to his 15-year-old girlfriend. Worse yet, if the boy does not “cooperate,” the police intend to take him to a hospital to have him aroused by injection. [Update: police have said that they will decline to execute the warrant after the public outcry].
The case is in juvenile court and the response of prosecutors and police shows a complete lack of judgment or restraint. The charging of teens for sextexting remains highly controversial. We are turned children into felons for personal pictures shared with boyfriends or girlfriends. Now, these Manassas officers and prosecutors are not only building a felony case against a minor but taking this bizarre step. The necessity of such an examination is highly questionable, but the emotional impact on the teenager is obvious. They have already photographed his genitals when he was arrested in January.
It is also controversial to charge a teenager with child-pornography for taking pictures of his own genitals and sharing it with his girlfriend. It is likely that she has seen his genitals given their relationship and there is no allegation that this was done for wider distribution or for money. Yet, they are accusing him of manufacturing and distributing child pornography.
The girlfriend’s mother called police and insists that he was repeatedly told to stop sending the images. This is clearly a serious problem but the need to resort to the criminal justice system remains a concern. She could have secured an restraining order — the violation of which would bring potential criminal penalties.
The police and prosecutor appears virtually obsessed with the case given its procedural history. Detective David E. Abbott, the lead investigator on the case, has refused to return calls. However, the case began with the girlfriend, not the defendant, sending photos of herself to the boy. Yet, she has not be charged. Instead, he was served with petitions from juvenile court in early February, but not arrested. The case however was dismissed due to an error by prosecutors. They then however obtained new charges and a search warrant. They then arrested him and secured this absurd warrant. The defense attorney says that Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Claiborne Richardson told her that her client must either plead guilty or police would obtain another search warrant “for pictures of his erect penis.” If that is the case, this is even more serious since it sounds like this abusive warrant was used to try to pressure a plea. Richardson then appeared in court to try to stop the teen from traveling until he submitted to the degrading photographs.
The fact that a Northern Virginia magistrate approved a new search warrant shows the lack of any real review in such cases. This warrant is both abusive and unnecessary. The effort to convict the boy of two felonies shows a complete refusal to exercise an ounce of prosecutorial discretion or for that matter judgment. While this story has been the source of jokes, I do not find it funny in the slightest degree. The people of Manassas need to seriously review the performance of their police and prosecutors in this case. Clearly, crime does not appear to be a serious problem in the city for these officers and prosecutors to take such extraordinary actions in such a case.
None of this belittles the problem of sextexting. However, these cases represent the continued criminalization of our society where every social ill is translated into a felony. We have been discussing the trend toward suspending and expelling students (and teachers) for comments that they make on social media (here and here and here and here and here and here and here). Some of these charges can saddle a kid with a registration as a sex offender as well as a felony record. However, adults are now just passing them over to a criminal justice system to be processed as criminals.
When adults start to secure warrants to force a child to produce an erection to be photographed, we have lost any sense of balance and judgment in our society. Whatever the dangers presented by sextexting are, they pale in comparison to the dangers inherent in his brutal response of the Manassas police and prosecutors.
While Clairborne Richardson has been listed as the lead prosecutor in this case, Paul B. Ebert is the Commonwealth’s Attorney for Prince William County clearly deserves much of the criticism for failing to properly supervise his subordinate. I have previously criticized Ebert for his lack of prosecutorial discretion in the Kevin Kelly case. It appears that the voters in Prince William County continue to support such excessive prosecutorial actions.
Source: USA Today
Someone in a local blog up there said that they were going to erect a statue of the prosecutor in honor of his work on pedophilia.
Out of touch and out of line. I’d kick this prosecution on substantive due process grounds so fast it would be out of sight before you could look up. How did our servants in blue secure the erection btw?
A general clause covering abusive conduct of prosecutors would have been nice.
Maybe what you have is a conspiracy of pedophiles– the prosecutor, cops, and certainly the judge– to see what they can see.
Boy you do not need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows in that place up there in Virginia.
Maybe they are projecting a little too much there the backwoods of Virginia.
Maybe they experienced a little too much, unnatural ways, growing up in them there tin shacks, with friendly uncles and curious cousins. Now that they are grown up, too many bad memories are stirred up by this newfangled sexting thang.
On the Eighth Day God Created Dog and sent Him here to Earth to take care of mankind. Mankind has listened to Dog (which is God spulled backwards) for all these years– and its more than ten thousand. God, on the Ninth Day, Created Rifles. Dog says use the rifles in that dumbschmuck county up in Virginia named after some Prince.
Bob, Esq – you have to admit this is not something that one would envision for an ethics problem.
“The defense attorney says that Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Claiborne Richardson told her that her client must either plead guilty or police would obtain another search warrant “for pictures of his erect penis.” If that is the case, this is even more serious since it sounds like this abusive warrant was used to try to pressure a plea. Richardson then appeared in court to try to stop the teen from traveling until he submitted to the degrading photographs.”
That’s not “more serious,” that’s outrageous.
Nonetheless, it doesn’t seem the Virginia Rules of Conduct covers this type of scenario.
See Rule 3.8
http://www.vsb.org/pro-guidelines/index.php/main/print_view
Sickening.
I’ll bet the police department and prosecutor did everything short of parading the defendant around the streets in tattering him pre-conviction.
I find it difficult to accept a magistrate would grant a search warrant requiring someone to produce an erection.
Personally, I think they would run into problems at the hospital where this would certainly seem to me to be a breach of medical ethics.
If this defendant had exposed himself to the girl in their own bedroom this likely would not have been a prosecutable crime.
I hardly see this as child pornography since it was not intended for wide distribution. I wonder if the fact that it was directed solely for one intended recipient matters.
And yet, the photographic evidence of his erect penis, which will have be part of the public record, will very much be intended to wide public distribution – a photograph of a minor’s erect genitals intended by the photographers for wide public distribution. I don’t know how much closer you can get to the definition of the production, possession and distribution of child pornography by the judge, prosecutor, and police, without it actually being so.
Gary T – Michael Jackson was able to get the photos of his penis back from the police.
Once again, the dog pack has the right idea.
As pointed out above, does this not also open the door for injecting more medication as required by law officials instead of doctors?? I know I may have my head in the sand for a lot of these legal issues, but I found that to be very troubling (well, beyond the obvious…) What will they want injected next?? Is this just another sneaky way to set a precedent?
The Judge can not wait to see it.
The prosecutors in this case are claiming that the defendant is old enough to be held criminally liable for perpetrating an act that is illegal only because he is too young to consent to participate in said act. Such logic would make underage masturbaters guilty of child molestation. I don’t think it gets more ridiculous or more unreasonable than that.
Brian S – I am not sure if it is urban legend or not, but I remember being told in the late 50s, early 60s that soldiers who were caught masturbating were charged with ‘destroying government property.’
That is exactly one of my points.
You cannot make someone illegal of themselves, just because they are who they are. They are literally saying that a minor cannot photograph themselves, without violating child pornography laws. A crime with no victim, or a crime whose perpetrator and victim are the same person. A person who the state has to save as himself as victim, by punishing himself as the aggressor.
Maybe he can even get restitution from himself, by suing himself for damages.
If the police have time for this and the prosecuter has time for this there are obviously too many police officers and too many prosecutors in this jurisdiction. The magistrate should be investigated. This is insane!
Is there going to be a line up? Will there be fluffing? Are we in Afghanistan?
isaac – I really want to see them make the claim that no two penises are alike.
Nick wrote “a penis photo lineup would be the only way to have a proper identification.”
At the risk of turning this into a penis-palooza, that would not work. If I were the defense attorney, I would go on Craigslist and advertise for penis photos. I have no idea what the going rate is for such things; maybe we’d need to bring in an expert, e.g. Brett Favre or Anthony Weiner. I would demand that a large set of photographs be used and, of course, I would select photos of penises that resembled that of the defendant. The lineup would be inconclusive.
saucy – this whole thing is strange, but the boy needs a really good defense attorney.
Virginia. Is that not where Eric Cantor is from? The county is named after Prince William? What weenies they are for keeping an English prince as the name of their county. Since those folks are all fags it probably incites a lot of things in that county. The judge needs to be charged with a felony. If the hospital cooperates then they too should be charged. But the kid needs a lawyer who can find the federal district courthouse in that pirate territory and file a civil rights act suit against all the government state agents involved in this for violation of his civil rights. Include the judge as a defendant. Anybody got a rifle in that county? That is what it is gonna take.
Paul, I was trying to “grow up” as instructed by Samantha. I learned working for the prosecutor’s office in KC that cops love to apprehend a perp and walk him right up to the victim and ask, “Is this the guy?” It is improper and prejudicial and that ID is no good. You need to do an actual, or photo lineup. In this instance, a penis photo lineup would be the only way to have a proper identification. Unless, the prosecutor can come up w/ a penis expert, ala a fingerprint expert. The penis expert could look @ the offensive penis posts and then compare different aspects of the defendants penis, testifying within a reasonable amount of scientific certitude, the penises match.
Nick – we now know that some fingerprints are alike, so can we, with any certainty say that this is the penis of this young man or not? Wouldn’t they have to duplicate the direct angle of the photo or would they take a variety of shots and hope to get the right angle?
I think the girl admitted sending her photo but is probably getting a deal to convict the guy. However, they did get a warrant to exam Michael Jackson’s penis because of supposed distinctive markings.
Court ordered male child pornography…
… Why no court ordered female child pornography?
I guess the prosecution is into boys and not girls…?
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Manassas-City-Police-Department/566888640050264
Two points come to mind here.
One – adults forcing sexual stimulation upon a minor, in order to photograph his genitals, sounds like all the elements of procuring child-pornography.
Two – outrageous that the girl, who did exactly the same thing as the boy, and who in fact did it first, was not charged with a crime, whereas the boy was.
Sheer discrimination, and provable as well.
To tell a 17 year old, that his whole person is essentially illegal if it appears in a photo, and that he is liable for photographing himself, is Kafkaesque.
The LEOs involved in this, including the prosecutor, are so far over the cliff on this one, it is amazing they can keep a straight face while they essentially are publicly demanding the production of child pornography.