This morning amateur porn performer Jennifer Dute was sentenced to six months in jail after pleading guilty to two counts of attempted obscenity during her second trial for charges that originated in 2002.
Dute won't be going to jail; she had already served seven-months of a one-year sentence handed down by her first trial court, a sentence that was eventually overturned and remanded in May of 2003 by an appeals court.
H. Louis Sirkin, her defense lawyer, said the Dute pleaded guilty to lesser charges to get the case over with.
“The ‘attempt’ takes it down to a lower crime, which makes it a misdemeanor, and now, it’s an expungible offense,” Sirkin told AVN.com.
Dute was convicted on two counts of pandering obscenity in October of 2002 for selling videotapes of herself having sex with multiple partners from a Web site that was named after Hamilton County Sheriff Simon Leis.
Leis is commonly viewed as having an antagonistic attitude towards Adult entertainment.
Dute was originally sentenced to four years, but the judge reduced it to 12 months because she had a one-year old child. An appeals court later noted that sentencing guidelines called for Dute to be placed on probation, not incarceration.
While serving her sentence, her case was overturned and remanded upon appeal because the trial court refused to allow a comparable video to be introduced as evidence.
The appeals court also found that the trial court had erred in failing to question the jurors in regards to their awareness of media reports concerning the case that could have been prejudicial to Dute’s defense.
Dute was released on bail after the appeals court decision last May and recently had twins, a factor in Dute’s decision to plead to lesser charges.
“It [the case] just had reached a point; it was lingering on. The birth of the twins had taken its physical toll on her, and she just recently had some surgery related to the birth, and she just wanted to get this behind her," Sirkin said.
“She just wanted it over with. Her life is going on. She’s really into motherhood, with three really adorable-looking kids.”
