I have previously been critical of the blind application laws on sending sexually explicit photos and other laws to teenagers. While purpose of these laws is laudable, we have seen various cases of teenagers facing ruinous charges over consensual exchanges. A case in point is Cormega Copening, 17, and his girlfriend, Brianna Denson, who were charged as adults in February for sending “sexually explicit” photos of minors. However, they are the minors. They were 16. However, in some twisted logic, prosecutors have charged them as adults . . . for sending minors these photos . . . when the minors are themselves and they are being charged as a adults.
Copening is a North Carolina high school quarterback but in North Carolina a 16 year old is treated as an adult, even though the crime is sending images to a minor. So he is legally an adult for the purposes of the charges but he is accused of a crime for sending such pictures as a non-adult (of someone under 18).
All of this makes sense to North Carolina police and prosecutors. Benson reached a plea agreement to avoid felony charges while Copening still faces two counts of second degree sexual exploitation of a minor and three counts of third degree sexual exploitation of a minor. Each count is a felony charge and a felony carries at least two years in jail.
Opening may also have to register as a sex offender.
What is also striking is that police and prosecutors threw the book at him after he and his mother cooperated with their request to examine his cellphone. He was not even a suspect in the investigation, which dealt with statutory rape. On the phone, they found five pictures of Cormega and his girlfriend. They were not sent to anyone else. They were consensual photos between two romantically involved teenagers.
Source: Fox
Idiot prosecutors. Here we have a couple who can legally consent to sex, but can’t possess new pics of themselves.
But we need to “make an example” of them which will follow them through life.
Richard,
“forgotwhoiam, but many people lived to much older than 40. It’s just the mortality rate for children was so much higher. Presumably, anyone appointed to the Supreme Court would have already safely navigated the perils of childhood.”
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Richard, it looks like life expectancy for SCOTUS justices has been INCREASING since 1789.
The SCOTUS justices are inadvertently modifying the Constitution by changing their life spans. That must be addressed and term limits or other appropriate measures introduced.
The Supreme Court is out of control.
I think there should be a COLA, or Cost Of Living Allowance, for the American people because the cost of living so long can’t be allowed. The cost of justices living so long has been the nullification of America’s founding documents.
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Wiki –
–Longevity and family life. Death age of the Founding Fathers. For their era, the 1787 delegates (like the 1776 signers) were average in terms of life spans.[14] Their average age at death was about 67. The first to die was Houston in 1788; the last was Madison in 1836.
–According to the birthdates listed on the Supreme Court website, the court’s nine current justices will have an average age of 75 by the time the next presidential term ends on Jan. 20, 2021. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the oldest justice, was born on March 15, 1933. She is now 82.Jun 17, 2015
And yet, omitted from the newz coverage, they can legally have full on down and dirty real world SEX at 16. (A legal adult can do a 16 year old too, in NC.) Just not on their phones.
“Sex offenders” are the current witches of old, dunk them and burn them if they survive and let God sort it out. So few justifiably belong on the registries bloated to justify their existence and to justify overprosecution just like this case. World Gone Mad.
Richard,
I’ll put you down as a NO on term limits for the SCOTUS.
How do you feel about objectivity? It’s not possible for 9 justices to read words differently. The variation in the decisions of the SCOTUS is ideological and corrupt. 55 men attended the convention and 39 signed the U.S. Constitution. Generally speaking, more than 55 men wrote it and the result was ONE Constitution. The SCOTUS ends up with 9 variations on that ONE Constitution. There must be a penalty for eschewing objectivity and rationality when deciding constitutional cases. I presume impeachment was intended to be that penalty and the Congress has overlooked the digressions of the SCOTUS. The ACA is fatally flawed and unconstitutional. The SCOTUS upholds it with impunity.
“For God’s Sakes, people! Use some common sense and apply the Spirit of the Law and quit adhering to the Letter of the Law. Do you see where we are headed?”
Therein lies the rub. The law is immune to common sense. It is only as effective as the slick tongue interpreting it. There is no one system that is perfect. The legal system is an anchor. It was designed by humans and is perverted by humans, just like religion. To ruin the lives of these two is a crime that should result in not only the disbarment of the prosecutors but time in prison as well, if for inbred stupidity if for anything else. Where is an attic when you need one.
Darren Smith: “On another note I believe this is truly an artifact of conflicting laws and changing times. It is rather remarkable how the two could have actual sexual intercourse with each other just as long as they do not film it. One would think that in another example actual raping of a child is worse than taking photographs of this, but for the these two teens the photos are worse than the sexual intercourse.”
The “conflicting laws” of which you speak are draconian in nature and have worked their way seamlessly into the fabric of American life. The times of innocence that one commentator mentioned in impaneling a jury are long past. My first husband was 17 and I was 18, when we first had sexual intercourse and were actually caught by a policeman, not quite in the act, but close to it, and sent on our way home, after a stern lecture about “bad guys roaming around in the dark”. A much saner way to deal with such a thing. With the first set of laws prohibiting sex offenses, came a second set, then a third, each being more restrictive and putting onus on the s. o. AFTER the person had done their time in prison. This has really gotten out of hand; when we decide to prosecute two teenagers who were minors for taking pictures of their junk as they were getting off and sending them to one another, have we just completely lost sight of what’s really important? Things like abrogation of Amendments III, IV, V, IX and XIV? Writ of Habeas Corpus? How about paying a little bit of attention to unwarranted shootings of civilians and now what seems to be a retaliatory spate of cop-killings? How far away are we from Civil War, or are we in one, and we’re just re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic?
Certainly, any prosecutor with 2 operating brain cells should see that this is not the Crime of the Century, nor is it any where close to Uncle Roscoe feeling up Little Janie in her jammies. For God’s Sakes, people! Use some common sense and apply the Spirit of the Law and quit adhering to the Letter of the Law. Do you see where we are headed?
john smith: “It’s time to put the blame on the technology companies like Apple that ushered in the age of “sexting” and have sold us devices for childen that are neay impossible me for parents to monitor and control — due “privacy concerns” which really means, consumer preferences. Of course consumers of all ages want to sext! To what extent does the common good ever control what global multi nationals want to sell? Rarely it seems. The common good is unknown in America the land of “individualism” ‘ “freedom” & all that crap.”
john smith, if that be your real name; it’s time for you to pack your duds & all that crap and move to North Korea. They’ll love you there. You, sir, have no idea what the concept and true responsibilities and the awesome power you hold in your hands as a member of a free nation, nor do you deserve to. Go live somewhere else.
John Smith-if that is your real name.
I choose the word inbred because it surfaces stuff hiding just beneath the paint job. The desire to be part of a group, be it religious, political, social, or other brings with it a feeling of identity and belonging. It also brings with it an avoidance of looking at issues objectively and from the perspectives of others. The I and the we must coexist but neither should take precedence where it will exclude the other to the mutual detriment of the whole.
This can be seen with the recent actions of the self empowering county clerk who identifies with her religion to her own personal benefit and can not fathom the overall rights of her society, the society that protects her freedom of religion. It was not religious beliefs that caused her to act the way she did. It was the ego of the I with its personal bias against homosexual marriages and the office which gave her the authority. If she was merely an employee she would have had one option only, quit.
The prosecutors here are functioning with a degree of xenophobic self empowerment that excludes the more important issues: the ruining of young lives and the precedents set to justify ruining others. These people are inbred in their perspectives, cannot see the forest but for one tree. Thank god they are on the way out of this society. The only problem is that they go kicking and screaming, ruining the lives of others.
Yes inbred is a universal alright Isaac. It should not be considered a slander only against rural whites. It can be a slander against Jews, too, who have practiced cousin marriage for millennia!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_genetics_of_Jews
‘Inbred’ is universal. It is a code for when all that can be seen is the tree and the viewer, in this case the prosecutor, has no idea what a forest is. Kind of like, “That’s the way we do things here in this county.”
“Inbred” is code for southerners. Obviously never been to rural New England.
Texan Polygynist
1, September 8, 2015 at 2:13 pm
This needs to be taken up to the Supreme Court to determine the eligibility of the cases surrounding the sex offender registry.
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Radley Balko and the gentlemen at the Volokh Conspiracy have covered this in depth. And noted how the Supreme Court latched on to bogus science and statistics to justify this double not-so-secret probation as somehow rehabilitative, instead of punitive. Never mind that no one is ever rehabilitated off the sex offender list.
Isn’t that what the founding fathers fought for, local administrations and legal systems, some composed of inbred blithering idiots.
forgotwhoiam, but many people lived to much older than 40. It’s just the mortality rate for children was so much higher. Presumably, anyone appointed to the Supreme Court would have already safely navigated the perils of childhood.
How very touching, legal and law enforcement cretins employed by the state of North Carolina have decided to destroy the lives of teenagers Cormega Copening and Brianna Denson in order to save them.
So much for the teenagers parents prerogative to raise their children without the state usurping their parental authority.