Christopher Wilson could be on his way to a lengthy stay in jail while he awaits trial on obscenity charges in Florida, after local prosecutors claimed he continues to engage in “criminal activity” by allowing members of his website to post sexually explicit images following his October arrest.
Wilson, the owner and operator of NowThatsFuckedUp.com, an adults-only, by-membership website that gained notoriety during the summer because it traded memberships to U.S. soldiers who sent in sometimes-gruesome combat pictures from Iraq and Afghanistan, faces a bond revocation hearing Dec. 16. If prosecutors succeed, he will have to await the obscenity trial behind bars, and it could be years before the case gets before a jury, according to defense attorney Lawrence G. Walters.
Walters maintains Polk County is strong-arming his client with the threat of incarceration in an attempt to control the content available on the World Wide Web.
“It’s very disconcerting to think [Wilson’s] continued operation of a website which has not been declared obscene could land him back in jail,” says Walters, whose client currently is free on $151,000 bond pending the bail revocation hearing. “It’s unheard of.”
Wilson was arrested Oct. 7 and charged with 301 counts of obscenity based on images that members posted to the user-driven website. Just after Thanksgiving, Polk County prosecutor Brad Copley presented the court with a collection of new images culled from NowThatsFuckedUp.com and complained that they indicate Wilson, 27, isn’t taking the matter seriously.
“We haven’t seen the original [allegedly “obscene”] images yet,” Walters says, “but the new images are of masturbation, heterosexual sex, and gay fellatio. There’s nothing outrageous—nothing you wouldn’t find on any number of other adult sites.”
More importantly, Walters notes, these are not images from the fevered imagination of a sexual psycho, designed to play to some sick, perverted, abusive lust; they’re user-submitted images from real-world sexual encounters.
“These are not professional porn,” he says. “These are the things that are happening in real life.”
Even worse, Walters says, is that because of the nature of the material – sex – the prosecutor is trying to hold Wilson to a criminal standard that has not yet been established. By asserting there is probable cause to believe the new images are “obscene,” Copley is “putting the cart before the horse” and removing the decision from the hands of a jury, where it belongs, according to Walters.
“It’s the clearest prior restraint [of free speech] you can imagine—the threat of incarceration,” Walters says. “And it’s a terrible abuse of the statute. [The prosecutor is saying], ‘You’re arrested, so now you’ve got to shut down anything you’re doing in the adult industry until you go to trial.’ That sets a dangerous precedent for the industry as a whole.”
Even though it seems to be a hideous perversion of justice, Walters notes it’s not the first time Polk County has engaged in what he considers less-than-savory legal shenanigans where adult entertainment is concerned. The last brick-and-mortar adult business extant in the county, the Varsity Theater, closed in 2003 after prosecutors threatened to pursue the owners for criminal racketeering. Walters defended Varsity, too.
According to Polk County Sheriff’s Department Chief W.J. Martin, the sheriff’s department has helped to shut down more than 100 adult-oriented businesses in Polk County since the 1980s. Two of those were websites that featured adult content. The owners of those sites were not prosecuted because they agreed to remove the sites from the Web.
Wilson, a former Lakeland police officer, is not willing to go that far – yet – although he did remove all of the sexually oriented images from NowThatsFuckedUp.com after Copley filed for revocation of his bail. Instead, the site now bears this notation: “It is with some regret that we must inform our users that this website has been forced to remove all sexually explicit content at this time. The owner of the site is being threatened with jail by Polk County, Florida, authorities if any ‘obscene’ images appear on the site. Since nobody can tell, in advance, whether an image might be found obscene by some judge or jury, we have chosen to remove all explicit content at this time. However, we will maintain the soldiers’ images as well as the chat and sex question forum.”
It’s the soldiers’ images that many feel caused the problem in the first place. Combatant-taken and -posted images from a war zone make a powerful political statement, especially during a period of growing anti-war sentiment and declining administration popularity.
“This guy wasn’t playing ball,” Walters says outright about Wilson’s “porn for pics” deal with U.S. service members stationed in the Middle East. “He was showing the war as it really is. We’re still investigating any potential tie between the federal government and this local prosecution.”
Walters also is seeking help from the Internet Freedom Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Free Speech Coalition. The ACLU has agreed to become involved in the case if Wilson’s bond is revoked, Walters says. The other two organizations have made no commitment yet, although FSC Communications Director Tom Hymes says his organization may consider it.
“This is an outrage,” Hymes fumes. “[Wilson’s] being punished for a crime he hasn’t been convicted of yet. It’s an abuse of governmental power and authority. The charges are vague, it’s prior restraint, and [Polk County doesn’t] seem to have jurisdiction even.”
One of the arguments Walters presented to the court in his so-far unsuccessful attempt to have the charges against Wilson dropped is that obscenity is a matter for the federal courts, not local ones.
“This really does need to be nipped in the bud,” Hymes continues. “It will embolden other prosecutors [if Copley prevails in revoking Wilson’s bail on the grounds that the webmaster engaged in criminal activity by continuing to run the website]. That’s what they do in ‘Communist China.’ Does Polk County want to be in China or in the United States of America?”
