A Utah woman is currently appealing her guilty verdict in which a jury was told that computer-generated images of nude minors are still illegal despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning a similar federal law.
The history of this case goes back to a few years ago when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the law banning computer-generated images of unclothed minors was unconstitutional.
The "Child Pornography Prevention Act" prohibited the possesion of "any visual depiction" including a "computer-generated image or picture" that "appears to be, of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct."
Then its majority opinion cited the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech and the court ruled: "The provision abridges the freedom to engage in a substantial amount of lawful speech. For this reason, it is overbroad and unconstitutional."
So in essence they decided that computer-generated images of child pornography were not illegal.
A new case involving Lexis Alinas, 47, is bringing this law up again. Alinas wasy seen by a librarian in the University of Utah's Marriott Library looking at a site called "Little Girls Extreme." She told security and they arrested the woman.
As it turns out the woman was actually a man and
news.com reports that she told authorities that from a very young age she had struggled with her sexual identity and had been dressing as a woman for approximately 17 years.
She (he) claimed she tried to castrate herself at one point and considers herself a woman... her drivers license also states that she is a female. She said the pictures were being used to aid in her search for self-awareness and to "
represent the way I felt that I should have been born."
That argument failed in court and Alinas was found guilty on multiple (7) counts of sexual exploitation of a minor. She received 607 days credit for her time spent in jail during the trial and was given 3 years probation.
Alinas is now claiming that the state did not and cannot prove the age of the children depicted in the graphics she possesed. He (she) also says that the state failed to prove that the images depicted real, actual children.
Now it is up to the courts to decided. Iscomputer-generated porn is still illegal?
