IP: NYPost Op-Ed on Ohio Man Convicted For "Obscene" Stories

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

>X-Sender: freematt@bronze.coil.com
>Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 11:45:45 -0400
>To: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
>From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
>Subject: NYPost Op-Ed on Ohio Man Convicted For "Obscene" Stories
>
>http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/34569.htm
>
>
>
>DON'T LOCK UP THIS PEDOPHILE
>
>By Eric Fettmann
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>July 11, 2001 -- BRIAN Dalton, a 22-year-old from Columbus, Ohio, will 
>spend the next 10 years in prison because he's a sick man with perverse 
>sexual fantasies about children - even though he did nothing more than 
>confess those fantasies to his own private journal.
>
>Dalton's fate is a testament to the growing trend in our society to 
>legislate against thought and an individual's state of mind. One need not 
>be a card-carrying American Civil Liberties Union member to worry about 
>the far-reaching and troubling implications of this case.
>
>What happened to Brian Dalton was born out of society's understandable 
>concern about sexual predators who prey on children; indeed, the 
>prosecutor in the case calls Dalton's sentence a "breakthrough" in the 
>battle against kiddie porn.
>
>But like so many of the "zero tolerance" schemes now afoot to counter 
>perceived problems like kids bringing weapons to school, this one smacks 
>of out-of-control overkill.
>
>Dalton, to be sure, needed to be watched: He was on probation from a 1998 
>conviction involving photos of child porn. So when his probation officer 
>came to check up on him, he took a look through Dalton's hand-written 
>14-page journal.
>
>There he found material so disturbing that he notified police: Dalton had 
>written about three children, ages 10 and 11, who he said had been placed 
>in a basement cage and sexually tortured. The writing was so graphic that 
>members of the grand jury hearing the case asked the prosecutor reading it 
>to stop after just two pages.
>
>Police at first feared that Dalton had recorded a confession to a most 
>heinous crime. But it turned out that the entire account was fictitious: 
>No children had been tortured or molested, and there was no evidence to 
>suggest that Dalton was planning any such act.
>
>Moreover, Dalton had made no effort to disseminate his writing on the 
>Internet or even show it to anyone else - it remained his own, private, 
>twisted fantasy.
>
>You would think that the legal case would have ended there - or with 
>little more than a judge ordering Dalton to undergo intensive counseling, 
>perhaps even revoking his probation.
>
>Instead, Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien brought an indictment 
>against Dalton, charging he "did create, reproduce or publish . . . 
>obscene material that has a minor as one of its participants or potrayed 
>observers." As far as O'Brien was concerned, even without passing his 
>journal on to anyone else, Dalton had committed a felony.
>
>Fearing that a jury might not consider the First Amendment implications, 
>Dalton chose to cut a deal: He pleaded guilty to one count of pandering 
>and was sentenced to seven years in prison, plus another three years when 
>his original probation was revoked. In return, prosecutors dropped a 
>second count that could have brought him 16 years behind bars.
>
>Because he pleaded guilty, Dalton can't appeal either his conviction or 
>the sentence. Which means that higher courts will not get a chance to 
>consider the constititutionality of the law.
>
>It's one thing to safeguard those who most need protection; the 
>vulnerability of children - and the known recidivist rate among pedophiles 
>- mandates that we don't always wait for actual acts to be committed. 
>That's the importance of Megan's Law, which gives local communities the 
>right to be made aware of known sexual predators living in their midst.
>
>There would be no question involved if Dalton had posted his journal on 
>the 'Net - even if he'd simply showed it to a friend. Or if there was 
>evidence of continuing related activity, such as taking part in 
>sex-related Internet chat rooms. But all there was in this case was a 
>twisted mind committing private fantasies to paper - for no one else's 
>viewing but his own.
>
>Sometimes it's possible to be too zealous when it comes to protecting our 
>children. The prosecutor's intentions may have been for the best - and, in 
>the long run, society is likely better off with Dalton behind bars, where 
>any threat that he'll prey on children has been removed.
>
>But the next person charged may not be someone with a prior conviction. 
>And that will be another victory for the thought police.
>
>Copyright 2001 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
>
>__________________________________________________________________________
>Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
>receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
>---
>
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