Journalista & The Beat provide an interesting link this morning to a site that includes a detailed critique of the local lawyers, including an allegation that Handley was not informed by his lawyers that he was pleading guilty to a child obscenity count that could lead to prison time. This strikes me as somewhat unlikely, given that Handley is on record as expressly pleading guilty to the child obscenity statute that has long been the central public issue in the case.
Still, there are several lessons here for retailers and readers of sexually explicit comics material.
Know your environment. Whether one likes it or not, the fact is that child obscenity cases are an easy way for prosecutors to get the sort of publicity that can help them advance in their careers. Relying on the popular belief that current law is clearly unconstitutional is a rather risky proposition. That you personally don’t believe minefields should be legal doesn’t make them any less explosive.
Know your material. If there’s a chance someone could perceive your material as containing sexually explicit images of teenagers or below, you’re potentially at risk. This is particularly true with manga, which has a robust tradition of childlike imagery.
However, the realpolitik of local juries makes even literary comics a risky proposition. For example, I could easily see a local prosecutor arguing that Alan Moore’s Lost Girls is merely a prurient perversion of childhood characters with no redeeming value. Yes, a scholar may argue against this, but the audience that counts is the jury, not the academy.
Know your case. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Handley did indeed not know the charge or the potential sentence when he copped the plea. If you, god forbid, ever find yourself in a similar position, I strongly recommend that you take a few minutes to read the documents you’re signing.
If you’re unfamiliar with a statute, look it up; if you’re not sure of the potential penalty, look that up too. If something’s not clear, ask, and if you might face jail time, consider paying for a second opinion or at least ask trying to ask the judge for clarification. It’s also wise in such situations to hold back from signing an agreement without an understanding–if at all possible, expressly stated in writing–of the sentence that the prosecutor is going to recommend.
On the flip side, it’s also useful to remember that a prosecutorial press release is designed to make the prosecutor’s side look tough on crime. A public reference to the maximum possible penalty does not mean that this is the sentence the prosecutor will request or the defendant will receive.
Again, my aim in all of this is merely to explain the situation, not to endorse it. There’s a significant gap between what many think ought to be the law and what the legal reality actually is. In the United States freedom of the press is not an absolute–if you read, sell or distribute material that could be seen as containing sexually explicit images of minors, you might want to consider how much you’re personally willing to risk.
May 22nd, 2009 at 2:54 pm
One more tip: give *adult* material a chance. This is particularly true with manga, which has a robust tradition in Japan of seinen and josei stories about adults, even though American publishers seem to focus on teenagers.
June 19th, 2009 at 7:45 am
Give me a break. Congress changes a few words around in the “Protect Act” to counter the Supreme Court’s recent Ruling and all of a sudden, THAT’S the “Legal Reality”?
The reality is this : Now, it’s be so-called CARTOON minors doing naughty things on PAPER that gets someone time in the Pen…Next, it will be a picture of a woman getting her head chopped off that will lead to 25 years to life for someone who has it.
Do any of you get what I’m saying here? This isn’t about defending the content….this is about defending the right to THINK, DAMMIT!!
you hear me, Jeff?? Mark???
geez….Give someone a blog and all of a sudden they’re an expert lawyer or something..
September 25th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Lets do this easy…is hentai pornography? Is lolicon a subfetish of hentai? Then quite simply lolicon is child pornography, open and shut. thought crimes would be an unpublished text story about a 5 year old being graphicly raped…which unfortunatley is of course legal…the problem with loli is it is a visual depiction of crimes agaist children. And I know I’ll never convince supporters otherwise, people will defend their sexual orientation towards children to the death but at the same time denying they’re pedophiles. If you can give me somthing else to label someone who masturbates to depictions of children as young as toddlers being raped I’d love to hear it.
January 5th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
@ Travis
No, it’s not quite as open and shut as you may like to pretend.
Is hentai pornography? Is it? How do you seperate art/erotica/pornography/obscenity etc? There’s no essentialist quality to pornography that allows it to be objectively discernible as pornography. Like Walter Kendrick says, pornography is not a thing but an argument.
Is lolicon a ’subfetish’ of hentai? I don’t think it’s necessarily logical to assume such a hierarchy and there’s also no guarantee that manga that otherwise concerns representations of what appear to be minor could not be considered either child pornography or obscenity.
“thought crimes would be an unpublished text story about a 5 year old being graphicly (sic) raped” It’s interesting that that’s the scenario you dreamt up considering that you could have just as easily invented a story about a pubescent figure, who’s technically a child in the legal sense, participating in a consensual sexual activity - That narrative would still have the capacity to be found objectionable.
“…which unfortunatley is of course legal…” Yeah, sniff sniff, how unfortunate. If only the government had the right to punish people for their private musings. Perhaps you should move to Canada and egg Robin Sharpe or something. BTW People in the US have been charged for writing stories in the privacy of their prison cells. These individuals were incarcerated for child sex offences and so they faced further charges for putting pen to paper. I can’t remember their names but I guess you could also find out if you were interested (but I doubt you are considering your condescending attitude suggests you seem to think that you’ve got sufficient insight into the issues at play here).
“the problem with loli is it is a visual depiction of crimes agaist children”. Nope, you could easily produce objectionable materials that were not depicting events that are criminal. Use your imagination.
“I know I’ll never convince supporters otherwise, people will defend their sexual orientation towards children to the death but at the same time denying they’re pedophiles”. If your thinking is generally as muddled and arrogant as it is here then I’d be surprised to hear you had friends, let alone be able to win an argument. Pedophilia is a diagnostic classification with lots of holes and so one could actually put forth such an argument. Add to that problems of self-identification and one has to wonder why you even bother to put forth your non-argument (that despite lack of expertise, you’re able to tell who is or isn’t a pedophile).
“If you can give me somthing (sic) else to label someone who masturbates to depictions of children as young as toddlers being raped I’d love to hear it”. Here we go again with the unsolicited nepio/pedophilia. It’s interesting that you like to conjure such scenarios.