A judge in Los Angeles, due to hear a major obscenity trial, is in hot water after the contents of his website became public... although no one yet knows how they did...
1) Alex Kozinski is the chief Judge of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. In 1996, he had a diary that was recently published, in the wake of the current scandal, on Slate. There isn't much here that he would have to recuse himself over-- unless you consider a lingerie (and pajama) party "obscenity." Looking at the above picture, we're not sure how we feel, mainly because of said party's obvious IQ average.
2) He was about to preside over what will surely become a landmark free speech case.
For jurors to determine whether [Ira] Isaacs' work is obscene, they will view hours of hard-core pornography so degrading that in one film, an actress cries throughout, prosecutors said in court papers.
But if jurors find that any of the four videos at issue in the case have any "literary, scientific or artistic value," the work is not legally obscene, according to a 1973 Supreme Court ruling.
"All they're going to do is turn on a DVD machine and hope the jury is going to be so shocked and disgusted and offended that they're going to throw me in prison," said Isaacs, 57, a native of the Bronx. He said he hopes that jurors will be shocked -- he's a self-described "shock artist" -- but also that they will see artistic value in the work. [LA Times]
3) Kozinski's site, which is now down for good, "included a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows and a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal. Some of the material was inappropriate, he conceded, although he defended other sexually explicit content as 'funny.'"
4) The trial was suspended today following the public outcry. He may be removed from the case, although hopefully not.
5) He would've seen this case for what it was-- a disgrace to the Bill of Rights/First Amendment. Lenny Bruce will have died in vain. Henry Miller would have written all those books for nothing. And Bill Burroughs would return from the dead and shoot everyone in a William Tell Trick gone wrong.
To be continued...
Via the LA Times.