Former CDBabes.com owner Mike Jones may have won a battle in an Illinois state appeals court, but the photographer says his happiness that his case is closer to ending is tinged with worry about where he might go to get his reputation back.
"That's just it," he told AVNOnline.com May 3. "There's still mixed emotions around town. A lot of the people realize it was nothing but a bunch of bullshit, but a lot think I'm the kiddie porn guy who got off on a technicality, and that hurts. And right now we're still examining what options we have to get some recourse out of this thing."
Illinois' bid to appeal the suppression of search warrant results against Jones was denied May 2 by a three-justice panel of the 2nd District Appellate Court of Illinois. The appeals court said it had no jurisdiction in the case, and the state filed its motion to reconsider a lower court order to suppress a day too late (the technicality to which Jones alluded).
"I’m elated that there's another indication that it may be over,” Jones said. “Although it ain't over until the fat lady sings, and the fat lady down at the courthouse ain't singin' yet."
But he didn't mind accepting the ruling in his favor on a technicality, either. "Anyone who is battling government will take anything they can get," Jones said. "But the long run of this whole thing is the fact that the dismissal came on a technicality that the state screwed up on its search warrant.”
“It was political from day one.”
"And now that the appeal is dismissed, all along even though people realize the facts, none of it is documented in court," he continued, "and the reality of the whole thing, the fact that this was a government push to run me out of business, it was political from day one when it happened, and the government manipulated the facts in such a way as they could obtain their warrant and their indictment, well knowing that it would destroy us."
Jones's legal troubles began after police first questioned him after hearing accusations from undisclosed parties that Jones had photographed underage girls in the nude. He has maintained consistently that he was 2257-compliant and told police candidly how he earned his living.
Police were satisfied, but others, including local prosecutors, weren't. They obtained a warrant to raid his home and business in the fall of 2000, and he was charged with child porn and obscenity.
McHenry County Circuit Judge Sharon Prather ordered all evidence produced by the search warrant suppressed in early 2004, holding that the warrant was overly broad prior restraint on free expression. The state told the trial court it appealed the suppression order one day before the original April 20, 2004 deadline.
Meanwhile, Jones said, all he can do is to continue waiting and looking into ways to get some kind of recourse from the county and the state. Among other things, Jones said he was forced to surrender his firearms while free on bond, as required by state law, which bothered him especially because he and his son are avid hunters and sport shooters. The day he was freed on bond when the case began, his friend took possession of all his firearms and equipment.
"That's the one thing my son and I looked forward to in the fall, waterfowl hunting and going to the skeet clubs," he said. "The thing we had together that was ours. And for the last five years we have not been able to do that."
Edging out mom-and-pop porn
As far as earning a living goes, Jones has taken "some oddball custom shoots" but little else, thanks to the notoriety of his legal case. "I've attempted to get some things going," he said, "but because of the past I haven't been able to formulate anything." He also said part of the dilemma is the drop-off in what he called "mom and pop" adult Internet businesses that couldn't remain in operation when Visa and other credit card companies tightened the screws on chargebacks and other matters tied to such "risky" businesses as adult websites.
"It's a shame," he said, "because as the Internet grew, half if not more than half of the webmasters were mom-and-pop shops making $200 to $500 a month extra running their little sites. And when the Visa regs came down the pipe … it basically threw them out of the business."
Jones's attorney, J.D. Obenberger, argued before Prather over two years earlier that more than 23 uses of terms like "portray," "depict," "simulate," "perform," and "appears to be" in the Illinois law under which Jones has been charged invalidated the entire law because together they run afoul of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the mere expression of ideas cannot be made illegal.
Obenberger said in statement released earlier May 3 that while he couldn't comment publicly about actual evidence in the still-open Jones case, probable cause for child-porn charges against Jones do not exist. "Mike is not and has never been a child pornographer."
Jones said he hopes what comes out of hearings for his side's motion to dismiss is that he can "take that information and apply it to civil rights violations that [I believe] have taken place.
"It's hard to say," he said. "The way the laws are laid out, these people can do what they did and they're fairly well protected. We're examining possibilities, but we couldn't really take any action until their appeal was done. It's still an open case. The county has not dropped it."
