Reply With QuoteCould you sum up what he's being charged with? This is the first I've heard of this case.
John Stagliano's court case has begun this week, and already the federal judge is working on stacking the deck against him. The dude is probably the most politically outspoken person in the industry, so this seems to be the government attempting to make an example of him and paving the way for future porn crack-downs. The materials the case is based on have been deemed off-limits for the press, which is bizarre considering they do not involve 'victims' that need to be protected from the press, so I don't really see any reason for this then the judge having already deemed them obscene. When the jury is supposed to be deciding if it's obscene or not, it seems the judge has already made this decision here for them, which can influence the jury's decision...
As expected, the case will be going by the 'Miller Test'. However, the judge has explicitly denied the defense from pointing out how readily available, popular and accepted similar works are in the 'community'. Also, the defense will not be allowed to defend the films' scientific or artistic merit by refusing to allow a respected psychologist or a film studies professor from UCSB to take the stand on those issues.
If convicted, Stagliano could be sent to federal prison for 32 years.
Reason Foundation has done a few youtubes on this (some are mildly NSFW):
Obscenity vs Freedom of Expression
Interview with the film studies professor
Interview with John Stagliano from 2008 when the case was first brought against him
Could you sum up what he's being charged with? This is the first I've heard of this case.
Sure..Originally Posted by mrmolecule88
This is for selling two videos ('Milk Nymphos' and 'Storm Squirters 2') and hosting a trailer ('Fetish Fanatic') on Evilangel.com, his porn website. The case boils down to whether or not the videos are obscene, and therefor illegal.
And they are supposedly more obscene than other porn because they involve lactation and squirting?
No. This has nothing to do with 'more obscene then other porn' and the defense is not allowed to argue against that aspect... (If they were, the case would be hilariously easy). They are supposedly obscene, period.
Isn't this left over from the big anti-pornography push the Bush justice department made?
So the judge has pretty much decided to find him guilty in advance, then.As expected, the case will be going by the 'Miller Test'. However, the judge has explicitly denied the defense from pointing out how readily available, popular and accepted similar works are in the 'community'. Also, the defense will not be allowed to defend the films' scientific or artistic merit by refusing to allow a respected psychologist or a film studies professor from UCSB to take the stand on those issues.
Yeah, these legal terms are sickening in their duplicity and hypocrisy. Fucking culture nazis. There, I Godwinned it already.
Maybe, but the current attorney general has done nothing to alter the previous AG's course on this. The Anti-Porn task force is still operating.
Checkout their task force website for a laugh:
Obscenity Prosecution Task Force
What a pathetic waste of taxpayer dollars. Cases like this piss me off.
They fucking misspelled obscenity on their nav bar. Professionals, these guys.
Has the task force brought any new cases since the changeover? If so, is the rate of new cases higher, lower, or roughly the same?
These are serious questions; my Google-Fu couldn't find an actual answer. It's surprising how little information is out there about this "task force."
No, but this is their biggest case yet. All their previous convictions were against fringe BDSM sites operating websites literally out of their bedrooms. They can't really get bigger in the industry then Stagliano, so they are putting all their eggs in this basket.
You need to stop this. You have completely mischaracterized what happened with respect to the expert witnesses in your rush to declare "GOVERNMENT HATES FREEDOM!!!!1"
In a trial, parties are not just flat-out entitled to have "experts" testify as to whatever they want. Consider Federal Rule of Evidence 702: "If scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact [here, the jury] to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise, if (1) the testimony is based upon sufficient facts or data, (2) the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods, and (3) the witness has applied the principles and methods reliably to the facts of the case." The judge is required to determine that a proposed expert witness' testimony would be admissible before allowing the proposed expert to testify. I don't have time to look into this extensively, but the story quoted in the comments here is instructive. The judge here, after conducting Daubert hearings with the proposed experts, determined that the proposed scientific expert testimony would not be of significant help to the jury and that there was insufficient evidence both that the proposed testimony had a proper basis and that the proposed expert qualified as an expert in this regard. The judge also found that there was an insufficient showing that the film studies professor was expert in this field. Finally, the judge indicated that if a stronger showing as to the expert's qualifications and the bases for the proposed testimony was made, the expert testimony would be permitted.
Short version: just because somebody is a "respected psychologist" or a professor doesn't mean they're permitted to give expert testimony. This is not Nam, there are rules.
Assuming that the story I'm seeing here is correct, it sounds to me as if the judge has reasonably precluded expert testimony for the time being because it does not meet the standards required by the rules of evidence and by precedent. I can't speak to your other frothings, but I'm inclined to believe that they're either overstated or mis-stated along the same lines.
I imagine the office looks something like this:
The argument that there's insufficient science involved with the sex therapist is rather specious, IMO. To the extent that any soft science like psychology/psychiatry can be considered the basis for expert testimony, a psychologist who successfully uses sexually explicit films as part of his therapy process is certainly in a position to provide information to the jury that they don't have, and to add scientific fact to the information available. Also, it's been established that psychologists do count as expert witnesses.
The judge's determination that the film school professor wasn't an expert wasn't that she didn't have credentials in the field, but because she hadn't published a book on the subject.
The witnesses were removed to exclude their evidence. That he was able to come up with specious arguments to do so is not evidence that he was acting in good faith.
Are they still filing new cases?
You're the one who's not acting in good faith.
The story I linked indicates that, with respect to the psychologist, there was insufficient evidence to show that his methods were widely accepted in the field. That goes squarely against one of the Daubert factors; namely, the "Degree to which the theory and technique is generally accepted by a relevant scientific community." It doesn't seem that it even approaches satisfying any of the other guidelines as to when something is scientifically valid enough to be admitted as expert testimony. I don't dispute that a psychologist can be an expert witness; my point is that the fact that one is a psychologist is not sufficient to qualify as an expert witness.
With respect to the film studies professor, there was the fact that she hasn't ever published on the subject (which obviously doesn't help to establish her as an expert) and the fact that she seemed equivocal as to whether there was any pornography that she would not feel had artistic merit. How does it help the jury to decide if something is merit to put somebody up there who will testify that "everything has artistic merit"? Remember that even if an expert is qualified and her testimony has a sufficient basis, it is still not admissible if it is not helpful to the jury in determining a fact in issue.
Plus, I'm not seeing the part where you a) are a practicing lawyer/judge and b) were present at the hearings on this. How, then, can you purport to know better than a federal judge how to resolve a highly technical question of law? There doesn't seem to be a lot of detailed information available at this point about the reasons for which the judge excluded the proposed expert testimony. Until such time as there's a written opinion on the matter, you're just making shit up so you can get indignant about it, or, even worse, blindly following somebody else's bullshit and getting indignant about it.
If the judge does stack the books to railroad the case through, wouldn't that be something he risks getting nailed for on appeal?
Anything a judge does that is incorrect risks getting crushed on appeal. That said, it's hard to get a lower court overruled on evidentiary rulings. Federal Rule of Evidence 103 states that "Error may not be predicated upon a ruling which admits or excludes evidence unless a substantial right of the party is affected" along with some procedural requirements. Thus, even if evidence is erroneously admitted/excluded, it's not sufficient to overturn a decision unless the erroneous admission/exclusion constituted an abuse of discretion by the judge and had a significantly prejudicial effect on the aggrieved party's case. Not an easy showing.
While I'm here, let me also state that I think obscenity laws are hilariously Victorian and the fact that we continue to have them on the books is ridiculous.
The author should be congratulated for managing to make it to the second sentence before declaring that they're JUST THINKING OF THE CHILDREN.
Why just the other day I innocently typed "hot sexy naked nakedness and boobies" into my Yahoo search bar, and all this awful pornography appeared as if from nowhere! Not only was I offended, at one point a booby actually jumped off the screen and punched me in the neck, harming me greatly. Thank Jesus Christ our Lord for the Taliban! I mean, for the good folks at the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force!Many of these cases arise from complaints by citizens who have been offended or harmed by the spread of hardcore pornography over the Internet, as well as through the U.S. Mail and retail outlets.
Sorry, you must choose one or the other.The Task Force is strongly committed to protecting free speech, as well as prosecuting obscenity crimes.
The defense moved for a mistrial yesterday.. This, after the prosecutor's star witness (an FBI special agent) said that the judge and prosecutor asked him to review the videos again before taking the stand to jog his memory.. The judge then stopped the testimony and sent the jury out of the room so he and the prosecutor could strongly deny that, because that would be a serious breach of ethics for everyone involved.
Anyway, the mistrial was denied of course.
And of course, if the witness said that on the stand, then either he's committed perjury (and therefore shouldn't be considered a reliable witness, am I right?) or he's telling the truth.
And either way, they should have accepted the mistrial.
The way you write this feels like you're either dismissing it or not understanding it. Not having published anything within your own academic field is a pretty damning negative mark, for someone claiming to be an expert (again, for academic topics. Obviously you don't necessarily need a special forces sniper guy to have written a book about it to consider him an expert in shooting people's heads off).
I am dismissing it. If there is a better person to talk about the artistic merit of porn, I'd love to hear an example, because it's not exactly my field. But this is after he rejected the psychologist because, as far as I can tell, the judge doesn't think sex therapy is real enough.. so I am inclined to be skeptical of him.
I hate to say I told you so, but, you know, it must be said. I even used your favorite source.
Yep, what sinfony said.
Case has been thrown out.
Good news. I don't recall you telling me they were going to throw out the charges, but still. Cool.
When did you tell who what? I see a lot of stuff about how the judge wasn't wrong to deny the expert witness, but nothing predicting the case would be thrown out. Granted, I scrollwheeled the fuck out of this thread, but still. There is a legal protocol to follow with I told you so's.
Hey, the good guys win one for a change!
Well, he was mostly responding to attempts to paint the judge as some sort of biased obscenity Nazi purposefully attempting to railroad the case to force his opinion to become law. This clearly did not and was not what happened at all.
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