pedophile « CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

Criminal Law Blog by Defense Lawyer John Floyd and Mr. Billy Sinclair

September 23, 2009

COURT TAKES HARDLINE STAND IN CHILD EXPLOITATION CASE

Filed under: Child Abuse Crimes Lawyer — Tags: child abuse, child pornography, pedophile, under age sex, video porn — johntfloyd @ 9:53 am

Video Taped Consensual Sex with Minor Gets Federal Time

By: Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

The federal statute that governs the production of child pornography provides, in part, that “any person who employs, uses, persuades, induces, entices, or coerces any minor to engage in . . . any sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing any visual depiction of such conduct or for the purpose of transmitting a live visual depiction of such conduct, shall be punished as provided under subsection (e) . . . if that visual depiction was produced or transmitted using materials that have been mailed, shipped, or transported in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce by any means . . . .” 1/

Most people think of the production of child pornography as child molesters collecting large quantities of the material for their own perverse use or as “smut peddlers” producing the material for profit on the black market. But the statute has the ability to reach into an individual’s bedroom and ensnare him in a web of serious legal consequences if he has consensual sex with a minor and records the event on a video camera.

That is what happened to 28-year-old Rubio Gadea Pliego in September 2006 when he invited four young males, including a 14-year-old, to his Minneapolis apartment for a party. 2/ During the course of the party, Pleigo performed consensual, although illegal, oral sex on the 14-year-old minor. Two days later Pliego called the minor and invited him, as well as the other young men, back over to his apartment for yet another party. This time, however, Pliego had secretly set up a video camera in his bedroom to record some of the party’s activities.

The camera recorded the three of the young men, including the minor, entering Pliego’s bedroom where they voluntarily watched porno movies. At some point the other two young men left the room leaving the minor alone with Pliego in the bedroom. The hidden camera then recorded the two engaged in a series of consensual sexual activities. (more…)

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July 29, 2009

A GOOD FAMILY DOCTOR OR A SECRET PEDOPHILE?

Filed under: Child Abuse Crimes Lawyer — Tags: child porn, child pornography, child sex crime, pedophile, sexual abuse — johntfloyd @ 12:09 pm

Child Pornography and Exploitation

By: Houston Criminal Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

Neighbors say the couple that lived in the $1 million home in the 11100 block of South Country Squire Road were “the sweetest on the block” who brought cakes to the new home owners that moved into the exclusive neighborhood. The 69-year-old orthopedic surgeon who lived at the residence was considered the “ideal grandfather figure.” He reportedly bought expensive gifts, including rent-free houses, for the economically deprived parents of several of his youngest child patients. Over a two-decade period he spent as much as $250,000 on these gifts.

But, according to police and Harris County Assistant District Attorney Eric Devlin, the doctor was a secret pedophile who began molesting some of his male child patients as young as four years of age and continued the molestation into the patients’ teen years. Following a two-year investigation by the Houston Metro Internet Task Force that began when a former abused patient, now an adult, came forward and reported the abuse to the police, the doctor was arrested on July 21, 2009 for sexually abusing four former patients when they were young boys.

The arresting authorities told the local media that The doctor was the “smartest, most obsessed” pedophile they had ever encountered. They pointed to two police vans of evidence, including videotapes of the sexual abuse, seized from his office and residence to support this claim. The Houston Chronicle reported that some of the evidence seized included “dozens of binders” of photos of children and news stories about “kidnapping and child brutality.”

“All the time he spent cutting out pictures of little kids, articles about rapes, murders, and brutal deaths and information that would help him ingratiate himself with his victims and any future victims,” Houston juvenile investigator J.R. Roscoe told the Chronicle, “that’s a lot of research. He was very friendly, very kind, a sweet old man. He would be the ideal grandfather, for the role he played.” (more…)

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January 2, 2009

ONLINE SOLICITATION OF A MINOR

Filed under: Child Abuse Crimes Lawyer — Tags: First Amendment, illegal sexual activity, online, pedophile, Solicitation, virtual — johntfloyd @ 5:35 pm

Online Solicitation of a Minor Statutes and Free Speech

By: Houston Criminal Defense Lawyer John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

In 2005 the Texas Legislature enacted Article 33.021, Texas Penal Code, which prohibits “sexually explicit” communications between someone who is 17 years or older and someone who “represents himself or herself to be younger than 17 years of age.” Some respected legal bloggers have opined that such online sexually explicit “communications” may violate the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech.

Existing case law, however, indicates this will be a difficult constitutional violation to establish. A First Amendment challenge to a criminal statute must be based on two established constitutional doctrines: overbreath and vagueness. First, “the overbreath doctrine prohibits the Government from banning unprotected speech if a substantial amount of protected speech is prohibited or chilled in the process.” Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234, 255 (2002).

Although similar, the vagueness doctrine is not identical to the overbreath doctrine. A criminal statute runs afoul of the First Amendment for vagueness if it “forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that [persons] of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application.” See: Connally v. General Constr. Co., 269 U.S. 385, 391 (1926)

The issue of whether § 33.021 violates either doctrine has not been addressed by either the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals or the federal courts. But it should be pointed out that § 33.021 is similar to 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b) which prohibits: (more…)

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