Patrick Naughton \nLOS ANGELES - Patrick Naughton won't be going free until he's sentenced in March, because the judge who presided over his trial has ruled he was in possession of real child porn and thus not affected by an appellate ruling which struck down a part of the federal child porn law under which he was tried on the charge.
The former Infoseek and Disney executive was convicted of possessing child pornography last Thursday. One day later, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals shot down portions of the federal Child Pornography Prevention Act, ruling that child porn which contained fake child images or adults posing as children was not illegal.
But the court also let stand portions of the act banning porn in which real children are used. And when Naughton was arrested in September, among items seized were his laptop computer which was said to contain hundreds of files of child porn in which actual children appeared.
Naughton's defense team had hoped the 9th Circuit Court ruling would mean their client's $100,000 bond would be reinstated. But Judge Edward Rafeedie ruled late Monday that Naughton's possessing pornographic pictures of real children made it a moot point.
Naughton's jury deadlocked on the case which put him on trial in the first place - whether he'd solicited sex online with a 13-year-old girl (who turned out to be an FBI agent posing in an online chat room) and whether he crossed interstate lines to meet a 13-year-old girl (who turned out to be a sheriff's deputy undercover) for sex at the Santa Monica pier.
