Judge Alex Kozinski - porn-haulic or victim of slander and invasion of privacy?
Earlier today, the L.A. Times reported that Judge Alex Kozinski has suspended a federal obscenity trial in California after it was found that his website contained numerous sexual images. Kozinski is the Chief Judge for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, but he was assigned to preside over a federal case where a jury will determine if a Hollywood adult filmmaker has violated the obscenity laws. The prosecutor requested that the trial be suspended while they determine if Judge Kozinski has a conflict of interest.
The website was not supposed to be accessible to the public, and required that a person type in the name of a subdirectory and a password to view its contents. Judge Kozinski stated that his son had uploaded much of the material, but that the website was used by his entire family to store images. Kozinski has requested that a court ethics panel investigate him to determine whether there was any wrongdoing, and says that he will cooperate fully with the investigation.
Throughout the day there has been fallout from the story, and much of the coverage has taken a "gotcha" approach, some outright attacking Judge Kozinski. Douglas Berman at Sentencing Law blog isn't sure what to make of it. Concurring Opinions, in a post titled "judges gone wild," takes a more aggressive tact toward the Judge, implying that Kozinski is in fact a pervert, and points out that this "sounds like a deliberate and conscious aggregation of misogynist images."
Judge Kozinski provided the following statement to the lawblog Above the law:
David: I can't comment on the trial.As for the other matter, the server was maintained by my son, Yale, for the entire family. Pictures, documents, music, audio and other items of personal and family interest are stored there so various family members can reach them from wherever they happen to be. Everyone in the family stores stuff there, and I had no idea what some of the stuff is or was -- I was surprised that it was there. I assumed I must have put it there by accident, but when the story broke, Yale called and said he's pretty sure he uploaded a bunch of it. I had no idea, but that sounds right, because I sure don't remember putting some of that stuff there.
I consider the server a private storage device, not meant for public access. I'd have been more careful about its contents if I had known that others could access it.
After actually seeing the photos that this is all about, I think it has been blown far out of proportion. I feel for Judge Kozinski and all of the negative press he is getting from this, because it is unwarranted. Many of the pictures that were supposedly on Kozinski's website are pictures that I have seen before, forwarded in emails or on humor websites. I don't believe for one minute that this is Judge Kozinski's "porn collection" or that any laws were broken by Judge Kozinski.
Some of the photos can be found here at Patterico's Pontifications (thanks to Gideon at apublicdefender.com for finding this). Gideon points out that the "tipster" that hacked Judge Kozinski's website and found the pictures is a lawyer named Cyrus Sanai who has had an ongoing public dispute with Judge Kozinski.
