While others enjoy the holidays with family and friends, Christopher Wilson may be languishing behind bars.
That’s because the Polk County judge presiding over a bail-revocation hearing Friday decided the owner and operator of NowThat’sFuckedUp.com violated the terms of his release by continuing to operate his embattled website until a jury could determine whether obscenity charges should have been filed against him in the first place.
Wilson, 27, who moved out of Polk County following his October arrest and indictment on 301 obscenity counts in connection with sexually explicit images posted by users to his community-driven website, forfeited $151,000 bail in addition to his freedom. The revocation hearing, requested by the state attorney’s office. represents a particularly cruel way to punish someone who embarrassed the Bush administration, according to defense attorney Lawrence G. Walters.
Wilson and his website gained national attention during the summer when it was reported that the adults-only, by-membership site traded access to U.S. soldiers who sent in sometimes-gruesome pictures from Iraq and Afghanistan. By displaying the war-zone images, Wilson committed a serious political faux pas, in the minds of some pundits, because the military and the Bush administration have issued an unofficial directive that such images aren’t to be published.
“This guy wasn’t playing ball,” Walters has said in explaining a possible factor underlying Wilson’s prosecution. “He was showing the war as it really is. We’re still investigating any potential tie between the federal government and this local prosecution.”
Polk County is notoriously conservative, having chased the last adult business out of its boundaries in 2003. In addition, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is President George W. Bush’s younger brother. The state attorney’s office, which works for the governor, filed the case against Wilson and will prosecute him.
On Monday, Walters and co-counsel were working feverishly to file what Walters called “emergency paperwork” in an effort to have their client released from the Polk County jail. They seek an appeal before a different judge, one they hope will be more receptive to their argument that because Wilson has yet to be convicted of obscenity – which is not a crime until a jury says it is – his continuing to operate the website while he awaited trial can’t be considered “continuing to engage in criminal activity.” Besides, Walters notes, after the state attorney’s office filed for the bail-revocation hearing, Wilson removed all sexually explicit imagery from the site and disabled the mechanism that allows users to post more. The site remains operational only on a limited basis, but the images from the war zone are still visible as what Walters calls “a clear and powerful political statement.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, the First Amendment Layers Association, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Free Speech Coalition all are considering becoming involved in the case, Walters says.
“It’s a big deal now in terms of abusing free speech,” he notes.
