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NEWS: Christopher Handley Sentenced to 6 Months for 'Obscene' Manga

This is absolutely ridiculous. Does anyone with a better understanding of the law know if he can appeal even if he plead guilty?

That's why obscenity laws should be repealed, because it's the only offense on the books where the actual fact that an offense even took place isn't established until a guilty verdict is rendered. Murder, rape, robbery, embezzlement, and the like have to actually be done before charges are even filed.

But is this drawing you have in your house "obscenity"? Well, we don't really know, but we're going to charge you with it anyway and leave it to the courts to decide whether or not an offense was committed in the first place. There is literally no way to protect yourself from obscenity charges because it's unclear whether or not what you possess is in fact obscenity.

GWOtaku wrote:

Are you for real? You should be ashamed of yourself.

Go on...

I wonder if Handley's doing anything special for Valentine's Day.

The funny thing is that it says he order some of these books from jlist, wonder if ANN or other sites will block their ads since they're apparently peddling kiddie porn.

Handley's original psychological assessment determined that Handley, "although honest with what he reported, was not disclosing enough to gain a complete picture of the nature and extent of [his] sexual deviancy...

It may be unclear to you, but that is, in fact, how courts already work. The prosecutor postulates that an offense under the law has been committed, and the court judges whether this is true.

SpacePope wrote:

GWOtaku wrote: Are you for real? You should be ashamed of yourself. Go on...

You should, you know. It's a supremely immature and uncivilised act to suggest that the proper response to a court's verdict is to form a lynch mob, whether virtual or actual.

- abunai

More than 80 books were retained.

The defense document stated that Handley spent his free time attending a Bible study group, playing online games, and reading comics.

His interests then "evolved" into a "fascination for images of young girls engaged in sexual activity."

Handley added that he "didn't realize that this material fell under the banned paraphernalia within the US."

Handley admitted he searched the Internet for manga with stories involving the sexual abuse of minors. The prosecution also stated that "The works at issue do not even have arguable ascientific, literary, artistic, or political value, such as Vladimir Nabokov's famed novel, Lolita, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, or even Alan Moore's recent, but controversial, graphic novel, Lost Girls. By the defendant's own statements, the works for which he was convicted of receiving and possessing are clearly obscene."

was not disclosing enough to gain a complete picture of the nature and extent of [his] sexual deviancy …

This is less about manga than it is about a guy who was a sexual deviant. His sentence is quite light, in retrospect.

Sad stuff. What a crappy situation...what happened to freedom as long as there's no harm.

Quote:

Handley's original psychological assessment determined that Handley, "although honest with what he reported, was not disclosing enough to gain a complete picture of the nature and extent of [his] sexual deviancy...

So you see, they are already convinced that his sexual deviancy goes even further. They just can't prove it.

Makes perfect sense.

Ugh.

I'm kind of ambivalent. One the one hand, the idea that somebody could be imprisoned for possession of drawings seems sort of crazy, but on the other hand this guy clearly had a long-standing interest in seeing representations of children being raped. That severely blunts my sympathy for him.

abunai wrote:

You should, you know. It's a supremely immature and uncivilised act to suggest that the proper response to a court's verdict is to form a lynch mob, whether virtual or actual. - abunai

But how else are they supposed to learn that this isn't acceptable? If they don't hear from us, then they'll think that what they did was okay.