Legal Ethics
9th Circuit Chief Judge Initiates Internal Review of Explicit Website Posts
Posted Jun 12, 2008, 04:07 pm CDT
By Martha Neil
After news reports that he has posted sexually explicit materials online, Alex Kozinski, the chief judge of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, has initiated a potential investigation of his own conduct.
"I have asked the Judicial Council of the Ninth Circuit to take steps pursuant to Rule 26 of the Rules Governing Judicial Conduct and Disability and to initiate proceedings concerning the article that appeared in yesterday's Los Angeles Times," he wrotes in a two-sentence statement to be posted by the 9th Circuit. "I will cooperate fully in any investigation."
Rule 26 apparently governs the possible transfer of a matter under the judicial conduct code to a different circuit's judicial council for resolution.
As discussed in earlier ABAJournal.com posts, Kozinski has admittedly posted some of the sexually explicit materials seen by a Los Angeles Times reporter on a website that could, at one point, be accessed by any member of the public who knew how how to reach a subdirectory. Kozinski has since arranged to block the site, explaining that he didn't realize it could be seen by the public.
Meanwhile, Kozinski’s son, Yale, told the New York Times yesterday evening that he maintained the site, which also included family photos and some of his father’s articles. “This server is my private Web server,” Yale Kozinski said. “It’s owned by me. The domain is registered to me. The people who have access to put files up there are friends and family.”
The issue has affected an otherwise unrelated ongoing obscenity trial in Los Angeles, over which Kozinski was randomly selected to preside under a program that occasionally puts appellate judges on the bench in federal trials.
At last report, the obscenity trial had been postponed until Monday as the prosecution determines whether to seek Kozinski's recusal. (Defense counsel wants Kozinski to continue to hear the case.)
Cyrus Sanai, an attorney in Beverly Hills, Calif., has told the Associated Press that he alerted reporters at various publications, including the Los Angeles Times, to the sexually explicit images on the website.
Related coverage:
ABA Journal: "Judging the Judges"
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Comments
Posted by associate - 3 months, 3 weeks, 2 days, 17 hours, 25 minutes ago
Isn’t this witch hunt the 21st century version of a guy buying a nudie mag?
I’m still trying to figure out what the fact that the judge has personally seen porn before has to do with his ability to rule on motions in the present trial.
Posted by Stephen Gianelli - 3 months, 3 weeks, 2 days, 15 hours, 49 minutes ago
My first take was that if the Kozinski material was similar to the “porn” in the trial he is presiding over (it reportedly included “fetish” and “bestiality” themes), given that Kozinski had publicly stated that he did not think the material was “obscene”, a reasonable person might doubt his impartiality to sit on such a case.
But I have since looked at the material myself, and in doing so have concluded there is no legal or moral issue involved.
There is nothing there that is obscene.
For example, the so called “bestiality” themed material is simply a humorous (in a juvenile way) You Tube style video of a visibly aroused donkey chasing a laughing fat guy around a field. It is not intended to arouse.
The other talked about item in reality consisted of two gorgeous fashion models whose naked bodies are painted to look like cow hide. They are not doing anything sexual, and are smiling. Hardly controversial stuff. There is racier stuff in Vogue, W, and Vanity Fair.
The so called “striptease” “slideshow” is simply one of those PowerPoint joke email attachments that invite the reader to “spot the real woman” as opposed to the sprinkled in transsexuals.
Except for the naked “reveals” I saw the same thing on a Maury Povich TV episode 8 years ago.
Second, the material was maintained on a family server that stored family photos, videos, and the like. It was not intended for public consumption.
While the site was not password protected, one would have to know the web directory extension name assigned to the file to access it, since none of the material was indexed or registered with any search engine.
This was a private web archived file that a persistent former disgruntled litigant prowled around in and essentially hacked to find and then download without permission in order to hurt Kozinski.
Unfortunately, the story line “judge presiding over porn trial gets caught with porn” is just too “man bites dog” for the media to look beneath the surface of the that rather appealing sound bite—so the story has rocketed around the world—just at the malicious hacker intended.
Judge Kozinski treats his clerks well, has a brilliant legal mind, does not take himself too seriously, is an all around nice guy, and he has been badly embarrassed by this tempest in a teapot.
Posted by Paige Bigelow - 3 months, 3 weeks, 2 days, 4 hours, 13 minutes ago
It seems wrong to me that the ABA Journal reported this story as it did if in fact the material on the website is as Stephen Gianelli reports.