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Teen Sexting Prompts Efforts to Update Child-Porn Laws

  • By KRISTEN WYATT, ASSOCIATED PRESS

DENVER — Mar 17, 2016, 2:20 PM ET

Rampant teen sexting has left politicians and law enforcement authorities around the country struggling to find some kind of legal middle ground between prosecuting students for child porn and letting them off the hook.

Most states consider sexually explicit images of minors to be child pornography, meaning even teenagers who share nude selfies among themselves can, in theory at least, be hit with felony charges that can carry heavy prison sentences and require lifetime registration as a sex offender.

Many authorities consider that overkill, however, and at least 20 states have adopted sexting laws with less-serious penalties, mostly within the past five years. Eleven states have made sexting between teens a misdemeanor; in some of those places, prosecutors can require youngsters to take courses on the dangers of social media instead of charging them with a crime.

Hawaii passed a 2012 law saying youths can escape conviction if they take steps to delete explicit photos. Arkansas adopted a 2013 law sentencing first-time youth sexters to eight hours of community service. New Mexico last month removed criminal penalties altogether in such cases.

At least 12 other states are considering sexting laws this year, many to create new a category of crime that would apply to young people.

But one such proposal in Colorado has revealed deep divisions about how to treat the phenomenon. Though prosecutors and researchers agree that felony sex crimes shouldn’t apply to a pair of 16-year-olds sending each other selfies, they disagree about whether sexting should be a crime at all.

Colorado lawmakers this week delayed a vote on creating a new misdemeanor crime of “misuse of electronic images” by teens.

Colorado’s bill was prompted by a scandal last year at a Canon City high school where more than 100 students were found with explicit images of other teens. The news sent shockwaves through the city of 16,000. Dozens of students were suspended, and the football team forfeited the final game of the season.

Fremont County prosecutors ultimately decided against filing any criminal charges, saying Colorado law doesn’t properly distinguish between adult sexual predators and misbehaving teenagers.

In a similar case last year out Fayetteville, North Carolina, two dating teens who exchanged nude selfies at age 16 were charged as adults with a felony — sexual exploitation of a minor. After an uproar, the charges were reduced to misdemeanors.

Colorado currently classifies sexting as felony child exploitation, punishable by up to 12 years in prison and lifetime registration as a sex offender.

“What we want to do is get away from the life-altering and devastating effect of a felony charge … by having lower-level crimes,” said Republican Rep. Yeulin Willett of Grand Junction, who sponsored the new bill.

But the legislation sparked a fiery backlash from teens and researchers who told lawmakers that sexting is so prevalent that even a misdemeanor, punishable by a year in jail, is too harsh.

“All different types of youth do it,” said Samantha Dehart, a 19-year-old college student who testified against the bill. “I can count on one hand the number of teens I know that have not practiced sexting.”

Amy Hasinoff, a communications professor at the University of Colorado-Denver who wrote a book on sexting last year, called the practice the modern version of a love letter or sexy Polaroid picture.

“Sexting is often portrayed as something that’s harmful, but we’re not seeing a lot of evidence of that,” she told lawmakers. She pointed out that it’s legal for two 17-year-olds to have sex, but not to consensually take pictures of themselves doing it.

Several prosecutors who argued in favor of the bill countered that minors aren’t capable of consensual sexting.

“Juveniles, left to their own devices … will do things that potentially hurt themselves,” said Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler. “We don’t let them own guns. We don’t let them rent cars. We don’t even let them vote, because we don’t trust their judgment.”

A Colorado House committee put off a decision on the bill Tuesday. Willett said he would amend his proposal to make teen sexting a petty crime, punishable by up to six months.

Hasinoff warned lawmakers that they will need to address the question soon: “Sexting is very common, and it’s not going away.”

Sourced From – http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/teen-sexting-prompts-move-update-child-porn-laws-37726083

These children of celebrity dads are taking their stepmoms to court

By

Rick Anderson

Jury to Decide if Monsanto PCBs Caused Plaintiffs’ Cancer

| March 15, 2016 12:45 pm

Monsanto’s controversial history with PCBs is being played out in trial in California state court this week, as the agrochemical giant has been accused of causing two retired plaintiffs to develop cancer.

The civil lawsuit, Dauber, et al. v. Monsanto Co., et al, regards plaintiffs Roslyn Dauber, 62, and John Di Costanzo, 87, who both claim that their non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma was caused by eating PCB-contaminated food for years, Courtroom View Network (CVN) reported.

PCBs, or Polychlorinated Biphenyls, are man-made chemicals once used to insulate electronics decades ago. Before switching operations to agriculture, Monsanto was the sole manufacturer of the compound, raking a reported $22 million in business a year. But when PCBs were found to be highly toxic, the company stopped production of them in 1977 over human health and environmental concerns.

Still, the pervasive legacy of PCBs remains. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)banned them in 1979, saying:

PCBs have caused birth defects and cancer in laboratory animals, and they are a suspected cause of cancer and adverse skin and liver effects in humans. EPA estimates that 150 million pounds of PCBs are dispersed throughout the environment, including air and water supplies; an additional 290 million pounds are located in landfills in this country.

Countless individuals, school districts as well as major U.S. cities have since slammed Monsanto with lawsuits for cleanup costs, environmental pollution and for claims that exposure to PCBs causes health problems to people and wildlife.

On Thursday, plaintiff attorney Scott Frieling of Dallas-based law firm Allen Stewart PC delivered an opening statement to jurors and Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge J. Stephen Czuleger about the history of PCBs, the difficulty in removing them from the environment and how these chemicals make their way into the food chain.

“They are virtually indestructible,” Frieling said. “Once PCBs are created, they will last a very long time.”

Frieling also touched on how Monsanto allegedly knew that PCBs were toxic for decades but continued production of the profitable compound anyway.

According to CVN:

Frieling showed jurors internal Monsanto documents dating back to the 1950’s that he claimed would prove the company knew for decades that PCBs posed a substantial public health risk but falsely represented them as being safe.

Freiling told jurors it was easy to link the PCBs in Dauber and Di Costanzo’s bodies to Monsanto, because the company produced 99 percent of the compounds sold in the United States. He claimed Monsanto intentionally avoided long-term safety testing on PCBs and instead publicized the results of short-term tests which didn’t allow enough time for negative health effects to become evident.

In response, Monsanto attorney Anthony Upshaw of Chicago-based law firm McDermott Will & Emery LLP argued that it could not be definitively proven that PCBs caused the plaintiffs’ cancer and that many people who have the same amounts of PCBs in their bodies never suffer any adverse effects, CVN reported.

“The evidence simply doesn’t support the assertion that the historic use of PCB products was the cause of the plaintiffs’ harms,” Monsanto spokeswoman Charla Marie Lord told CVN. “We are confident that the jury will conclude, as past juries have done, that the former Monsanto Company is not responsible for the alleged injuries.”

She also added that Monsanto’s involvement in the trial stems from contractual obligations associated with former chemical businesses that operated under the company’s name, and that Monsanto today is focused solely on agriculture.

The current trial is expected to run through the end of March. Previous rulings over PCBs lawsuits, however, have ruled in favor of Monsanto. CVN noted that a Los Angeles jury and a Missouri state court jury handed the company wins in 2014 and 2015, respectively.

Incidentally, a current House bill could give Monsanto permanent immunity from liability for injuries caused by PCBs. The New York Times reported last month that Republicans in Congress have inserted a clause into the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) reauthorization bill that would effectively exempt Monsanto from liability for injuries caused by PCBs.

Environmental attorney Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has sparred over PCBs for three decades, wrote this week that the “so-called ‘Monsanto Rider’ would shield the chemical colossus from thousands of lawsuits by cities, towns, school districts and individuals, who have been injured by exposure to PCBs.”

“If Monsanto gets its way, the American people will pay a high price for corporate greed and political corruption,” Kennedy said.

Full Article – https://ecowatch.com/2016/03/15/jury-decide-pcbs-caused-cancer/

Gawker posting Hulk Hogan’s sex tape was wrong. But was it legal?

A $100 million lawsuit that could bankrupt the media company rests on complicated questions about “newsworthiness”

by 

That Gawker posted a video of Hulk Hogan having sex, a video recorded and distributed without his consent, is unethical. Hogan, legal name Terry G. Bollea, says he was secretly taped, apparently by his friend, while having sex with that friend’s then-wife, at that friend’s invitation. In one light, the story can be read as humorous, because it involves Hulk Hogan and the wife of a man named “Bubba the Love Sponge.” But just think: What if Gawker had posted the nude video creepily taken of ESPN sportscaster Erin Andrews? Oh wait, Deadspin, Gawker’s sister site, did link to the site that posted the video. Clearly, it’s all pretty vile.

Vileness, however, won’t stop some people on the Internet, including some who pretend they are journalists. The key question, then, is whether it was in the legal clear. We’ll find out soon enough: Hogan is currently suing Gawker in a Florida court for a potentially bankrupting $100 million.

Gawker defends posting a portion of the video—above a ruminating think piece about why proles like watching celebrities fuck—because it was newsworthy. How that can possibly be was explained by the post’s author, former Gawker editor A.J. Daulerio, in a videotaped deposition played in court: The only thing that could make a celebrity sex tape non-newsworthy, he snarked, would be if that celebrity was under the age of 4.

Even when the subject of such a video isn’t a celebrity, Daulerio has shown little compunction about publishing. To wit: When Gawker posted a video of a young woman’s bathroom stall sexual encounter several years ago, the woman emailed Daulerio begging that it be taken down, and suggested that she might have been raped. Daulerio responded by refusing to take it down, though the site changed its mind soon thereafter.

“I’m sure it’s embarrassing but keep your head up, these things pass,” he reportedly emailed.

If I prized schadenfreude, I might pray that someone riding so high on ethics-free hubris might one day face a karmic sally of Internet-breaking public humiliation, one laying him so low that any would-be trolls thinking about following in his footsteps would be deterred from doing so forever after.

Such a wish, however, would be unkind. More to the point, it’s way beyond my technological prowess to effectuate. So, instead, I decided to dig into the the legal questions at hand.

The lawsuit was filed in a state court, so it won’t set any larger precedent unless it is ultimately appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. But it nonetheless concerns a question deemed of incredible importance: Is Gawker protected by First Amendment free press rights? Or, in an age rife with Internet-based harassment and revenge porn, does Hogan’s right to privacy win out? There’s not a lot of precedent here, so courts around the country will be looking to how the Florida lawsuit plays out.

Of the four experts I contacted, only one, Santa Clara University School of Law professor Eric Goldman, said that Gawker’s actions might be protected by the First Amendment because of Hogan’s previous statements — that he had not had sex with that woman — and the fact that he is a celebrity.

“Change virtually any fact and the legal analysis would look very different,” emails Goldman. “If Bollea hadn’t made the false public statements, the newsworthiness of the video would decrease; and if Bollea wasn’t a high-profile celebrity, there usually would be little or no newsworthiness to the video footage.”

Three other legal scholars told me that Gawker was in the wrong, albeit for different reasons.

Amy Gajda, a law professor at Tulane and the author of “The First Amendment Bubble: How Privacy and Paparazzi Threaten a Free Press,” says that existing laws allowing people to bring suit for invasion of privacy suffice.

“There is enough space in First Amendment law to suggest that Gawker cannot do this,” says Gajda. “If private information is revealed…like nudity, sex information, medical information, then that revelation of information can be punished despite the First Amendment as long as the information is not newsworthy or not in the public interest.”

Read Full Article – http://www.salon.com/2016/03/13/gawker_posting_hulk_hogans_sex_tape_was_wrong_but_was_it_legal/

Tips for finding a top personal injury lawyer

You’ve been hurt in a wreck. You’re in pain and you now have medical expenses and lost wages from missed work.

Who do you turn to for help? Aside from your medical care provider, a personal injury lawyer is an important part of any recovery plan.

But, not all lawyers are created equal. You’ll want to work with one you can trust, feel confident about and that is results minded and prepared to provide aggressive representation on your behalf.

Here are three suggestions to help you in your search to find a lawyer after an accident.

Ask around: Personal referrals from family, friends and co-workers are a good place to start in your search for an injury lawyer.  Keep in mind that even though their input is valuable, you’ll still want to contact the law firm directly to make sure they are a good fit for you and your type of injury claim.

Read reviews: Online attorney directories are another place for you to research a potential attorney.  Avvo, Nolo and Legal Match are just a few sites to learn more about a law firm and read reviews about specific attorneys.

Contact a law firm directly: A third option is to call a law firm directly and schedule a free consultation. During this meeting you’ll be able to go over the basics of your accident and get a better idea if they are right for you.

What to bring to a consultation

Once you have a list of potential lawyers and scheduled an initial free consultation, you’ll want to put together a list of questions to bring with you. You will also want to bring copies of your police report, medical records and bills, loss of income details and any correspondences you’ve have with an insurance company.

Important questions you should ask during a consultation include:

1. How long have you been practicing personal injury law?

2. Would your personal injury claim be handled directly by an attorney or other legal staff member?

3. Are there any potential costs that might be associated with handling your personal injury claim?

4. How long will it take to settle your case?

After you find a lawyer, there are additional steps you will need to take to help get your personal injury claim settled. Luckily experienced attorneys, such as those at Lerner and Rowe Injury Attorneys, can help you through the process.

Wise Law’s legal team of board certified personal injury attorneys provide aggressive, results driven representation for personal injury claims throughout the great country of America.  Just like family, the law firm is available 24/7 — giving you peace of mind knowing that you can get assistance after an accident and / or injury, day or night.

Call them directly at 800-270-8184 for a free consultation. The call is free and there are no out-of-pocket costs and no fees unless they win compensation for your case.