Two things about this case.
First, if recent opinions by the Ninth Circuit are any indication, there has been an explosion in child pornography prosecutions lately. I kid you not when I say that every other Ninth Circuit opinion recently seems to involve a kiddie porn prosecution. It was sufficiently weird to see all these child pornography cases that I actually went back and counted them. There's Hill today. The day before, there was Battershall. Two days before that, there was Ziegler (which I discussed here). And a couple weeks ago there was Romm (which I also discussed, here).
During this period, there were 13 published Ninth Circuit opinions in criminal cases. 4 of the 13 -- over thirty percent -- of these cases involved child pornography prosecutions. And, during the past three days, 3 of the last 8 Ninth Circuit opinions in criminal cases days have been child porn cases.
What's going on here?! Was it NAMBLA week at the Ninth Circuit? Weird.
Second, check out who the trial court judge was in this latest case. None other than our own Alex Kozinski. I guess he (and his clerks) don't have enough work to do on the Ninth Circuit to keep them sufficiently busy, so he's got to troll in the district court for some extracurricular fun. And no, I'm not saying he was deliberately trolling for kiddie porn cases. Get your minds out of the gutter.
P.S. - How'd the case come out, you ask? Well, you'll be happy to know that Judge Kozinski's colleagues on the Ninth Circuit unanimously affirmed his decision below. And even said nice things about him. Shockingly.
