Saying Tennessee's anti-child porn law is flawed because it lets a jury decide whether a person shown in porn is a minor, and could lead to someone being convicted for possessing porn even though an actual minor wasn't used, a Knox County judge struck down the corresponding section of the law as unconstitutional November 4.
Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner's ruling, according to the Knoxville News-Sentinel, could be the first such ruling since a legal brawl broke out over a decade-old law targeting child porn consumers.
Two sections of the law were at issue in this instance, the newspaper said, one banning the use of minors in porn and the second banning porn material which appears to show minors regardless of whether there is proof the participants in question are underage. Baumgartner upheld the first section but specified prosecutors could try cases solely through that provision.
Not that that proved any good news to Knox County Assistant District Attorney General Kevin Allen, who also runs a state task force aimed at Internet child porn. "This is not good for the state," he told the News-Sentinel. "Effectively, our position is going to be that now we're going to have to track down these kids." And he said that could be difficult if not near-impossible, since child porn is known to be produced around the world before hitting cyberspace and many such images are as old as the 1970s, the paper added.
Allen's office is mulling whether to appeal the Baumgartner ruling.
But the defense in one case before Baumgartner wasn't necessarily assuaged by the judge's ruling either, the News-Sentinel said. "It's clear the status of the law, based on the court's order, is still very unclear," said Gregory P. Isaacs, an attorney who was seeking an outright dismissal in a computer porn case in the court, who argued the Tennessee law mirrored a federal law struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2002.
