(NOTE: This is less a “sexting” case than a portrait of an overbearing prosecutor. The trial judge issued a temporary restraining order against the prosecutor, which is how the case got to the Third Circuit. You can read the lower court’s opinion here. While I think it’s a very close call, I expect the Third Circuit to uphold the injunction. There is no question that “sexting” is a problem, but this kind of spurious prosecution — or, more accurately, threatened prosecution — is definitely not the remedy. – Mike)
Shannon P. Duffy
The Legal Intelligencer
January 19, 2010
As the nation’s first case involving criminal prosecutions of teenagers for “sexting” made its way to a federal appeals court in Philadelphia, all three judges seemed skeptical of the prosecutor’s claim that child pornography laws are violated when a teen transmits a nude image of herself.
The three 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges also appeared poised to declare that former Wyoming County District Attorney George Skumanick Jr. violated the First Amendment rights of three girls with his threat of a criminal prosecution if they refused to take a class he had designed to educate youths about the dangers of sexting.
“I don’t know of anything that says a district attorney’s office is allowed to, in effect, play the role of teacher,” Judge Thomas L. Ambro said.
But attorney Michael J. Donohue of Kreder Brooks Hailstone in Scranton, Pa., argued that Skumanick was right to take the cases seriously when school officials informed him of a rash of sexting incidents, and that each of the students had the option to refuse the class and “face the music” in a juvenile court proceeding.
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