This story will undoubtedly spread across the interwebs quickly, but a federal judge got caught with a bunch of dirty pictures on his personal server:
“Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said he thought the material on his Web site couldn’t be seen by the public, the Los Angeles Times reported on its Web site. The images included a video of a ‘half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal,’ the newspaper reported.”
Wait a second – Kozinski? Say it ain’t so! His opinions are some of the few that are even moderately enjoyable to read in our casebooks. OK, well maybe there’s an excuse or some kind of legitimate reason…
“The judge’s son called Kozinski to say he had been responsible for uploading some of the material onto the computer.”
So maybe it was his kid’s fault! Yeah, that’s the ticket! But later in the article…
“…Kozinski said he must have accidentally uploaded the images to his server while trying to upload something else…Kozinski said he began saving the sexually explicit materials and other items of interest years ago, the Times said… ‘People send me stuff like this all the time,’ he said.”
Maybe my brain is sort of toasted from reading the Texas Property Code for a few hours and I can’t comprehend news articles anymore, but something doesn’t add up. Did the son save the pictures to the family computer or did the elder Kozinski save them, or were they both saving the thoroughly naughty (and bizarre) photos? Storing them on your family computer and server? How does that make any sense? “people send me stuff like this all the time?” What people, prospective clerks? People on .alt newsgroups?
Using the ol’ “I accidentally uploaded the wrong file” defense? At least claim it was hackers. I mean come on Kozinski, you’re supposed to be one of the most technologically literate federal judges around, you’ve heard cases with facts that sound just like this.
Is it wrong to store photos depicting deviant fetishes/does it speak to someone’s moral rectitude? I guess it’s not illegal, but I’d imagine the average person would think this is at least pretty weird, if not downright offensive regardless of the how or who saved these images. Of course the key sticking point here is he’s a well-known federal judge presiding over an obscenity case. A different set of standards apply to him. He should know better.
It never fails to shock me when people in positions of power fail to check their irony or hypocrisy magnets at the door. He really ought to quit horsing around. That was too easy, I had to do it.
See also WSJ.com Law Blog.
UPDATE: From the ABA Journal.
-WK
Posted by WK 