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INTERNET CRIMES AGAINST
CHILDREN
In 1998, the Portsmouth, NH and Keene, NH Police Departments along with
the Education Development Center, Inc. of Newton, Massachusetts, were
awarded a $300,000 Justice Department grant to combat Internet child sexual
exploitation. This grant was awarded by the Justice Department's
Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) under its Internet Crimes Against
Children program. The grant was used for undercover operations, the education
of law enforcement officers and in the development of prevention materials.
The service area for the grant covered the states of Maine, New Hampshire,
and Vermont.
The goal of this project was to create a Regional Task Force on Internet
Crimes Against Children serving the three rural northern New England
states: Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Through this Task Force we
identified and supported sources of technological and investigative expertise
as well as forensic resources to enhance proactive and reactive investigations
of Internet crimes against children across the northern New England region.
January 13th, 2000 marked the end of our full-time three-year Internet
law enforcement project which we had started in 1997. It also marked the
end of the Justice Department grant. Currently we maintain a part-time
undercover operation through the City of Keene, NH. To date over 350 offenders
from 48 different states and 13 foreign countries have been arrested and
over 2,000,000 child pornographic images seized.
One of our goals is to collect descriptive characteristics of those
offenders who have committed sexual exploitation crimes with a computer.
Our Offender Profile contains much
of our data. This includes occupations of offenders and previous involvement
with children. We have also included the state or country the offender
resides or resided in. Part of our data collection included the ages of
suspects. We have had suspects as young as thirteen and as old as sixty-seven.
To date, the Keene Police Department has been involved with over 260 cases
of Internet child sexual exploitation.
Due to the numerous requests we have received for a copy of the affidavit
we use for Internet crimes, I have included a sample
affidavit for law enforcement use. Please feel free to use it
as a guideline when writing your own affidavits.
Tanner staging, which was designed for estimating development or physiologic
age for medical, educational, and sports purposes (in other words, identifying
early and late maturing children), has been misused in the courts when
it is used not to stage maturation, but to estimate probable chronological
age. For a better understanding of the Misuse of the Tanner
Scale, you may wish to read the communication between Detective
McLaughlin of the Keene Police Department and Dr. Arlan Rosenbloom; Department
of Pediatrics at the University of Florida College of Medicine.
Arrests have been made in many different states and several foreign countries.
Our arrest totals by state breaks
down the arrests state by state.
Detective McLaughlin's advice
for parents.
New
Hampshire Department of Safety
Division of State Police Registered Offenders Against Children
http://www.state.nh.us/safety/nhsp/
Pursuant to NH RSA 651-B:7, IV, the Division of State Police is required
to identify and maintain a record of parties to whom the list of Registered
Offenders Against Children has been disclosed.
New Hampshire v. David Cobb
- child pornography as defined by statute.
- proving the age of the child in each photograph.
- consolidation of the child pornography charges with an attempted
felonious sexual assault charge.
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United States v. Carroll
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sufficiency of evidence.
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jury instructions.
United States v. Dolloph
United States v. Gamache
- not giving any jury instruction on the question of entrapment.
- statute punishes conduct, not "mere thoughts".
United States v. Amirault
- legal standards for evaluating whether a photograph displays sexually
explicit conduct.
Keith Jacobson v. United States
- predisposed independent of Government acts.
United States v. Hilton
- constitutionality of the Child Pornography Prevention Act.
United States v. Robinson
- rights under the Due Process Clause/did not have fair notice that
possession of pornographic materials had become illegal.
- that § 2252(a)(4)(B) exceeds Congress's authority under the
Commerce Clause.
United States v. Knox
- videotapes that focus on the genitalia and pubic area of minor females
constitute a "lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic
area" under the federal child pornography laws (even though these
body parts are covered by clothing).
United States v. Turner
- Not objectively reasonable for a detective to have concluded that
evidence of an assault -- the stated object of the consent search
-- would be found in a computer.
Travers v. Florida
- Under the totality of the circumstances, the police did not have
well-founded suspicion to stop and detain Travers. The officers could
have engaged in a consensual encounter, but chose otherwise.
United States v. Upham
- The seizure of unlawful images is within the plain language of the
warrant; their recovery, after attempted destruction, is no different
than decoding a coded message lawfully seized or pasting together
scraps of a torn-up ransom note.
New York v. Ferber
- The States are entitled to greater leeway in the regulation of pornographic
depiction's of children for the following reasons: (1) use of children
as subjects of pornographic materials is harmful to the physiological,
emotional, and mental health of the child (2) the standard of Miller
v. California, 413 U.S. 15 , for determining what is legally obscene
is not a satisfactory solution to the child pornography problem; (3)
the advertising and selling of child pornography provide an economic
motive for, and are thus an integral part of, the production of such
materials, an activity illegal throughout the Nation; (4) the value
of permitting live performances and photographic reproductions of
children engaged in lewd exhibitions is exceedingly modest, if not
de minimis; and (5) recognizing and classifying child pornography
as a category of material outside the First Amendment's protection
is not incompatible with this Court's decisions dealing with what
speech is unprotected.
United States v. X Citement Video, Inc.
- Respondents also argued below that their indictment was fatally
defective because it did not contain a scienter requirement on the
age of minority. The Court of Appeals did not reach this issue because
of its determination that §2252 was unconstitutional on its face,
and we decline to decide it here.
United States v. Black
- Black argues that his prosecution under 18 U.S.C. sec 2252 is unconstitutional
under the Eighth Amendment because he is a pedophile or ephebophile.
United States v. Byrd
- Byrd argues that Jacobson requires the government to prove predisposition
only by evidence that existed before the government began its solicitation.
This argument misstates the Jacobson holding (predisposition must
be independent of government action).
- Prompt response to each government mailing illustrates his predisposition.
Connection Distributing v. Janet Reno
- Challenged record keeping and labeling provisions require anyone
publishing to maintain identification records and label the publication
as to the location of those records
Greene v. Reeves
United States v. Grossenheider
- Non-government search followed by Government search "independent
source" doctrine (distinct, untainted source).
United States v. Hall
- Evidence was discovered by private search \
United States v. Katz
- Whether the age of a model in a child pornography prosecution can
be determined by a lay jury without the assistance of expert testimony.
United States v. Kimbrough
- Executing officer would reasonably know what items are to be seized
- Seizure of all video and audio tapes was necessary because the titles
of such tapes were not dispositive of their content and that the absence
or presence of child pornography in such items could not be determined
by a cursory examination on the premises
United States v. Moore
- Consent search for child pornography
- Probable cause for arrest for child pornography
United States v. Salvo
- Consent search for child pornography
United States v. Schmeltzer
- General knowledge that the material is sexually oriented.
United States v. Layne
- Possession may be actual or constructive.
- Possession is a continuing offense.
- Knowing possession of illegal material is not a passive crime.
United States v. Thomas
- Propriety of venue: the site of the defendant's acts, the elements
and nature of the crime, the locus of the effect of the criminal conduct,
and the suitability of each district for accurate fact finding...
United States v. Campos
- Testimony regarding the meaning of a screen name registered to on-line
accounts.
United States v. Anderson
- Exigent circumstances during controlled delivery of child pornography
United States v. Fabiano
- Defendant argues that the evidence was insufficient to prove that
Defendant knew, prior to receiving the visual depictions, that the
images depicted minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
United States v. Rowland
- Anticipatory warrants based on delivery of contraband.
United States v. Simpson
- Probable cause for the issuance of a search warrant.
- Other bad acts.
United States v. Arvin
- We hold that a depiction of a minor need not be obscene to satisfy
the definition of "sexually explicit conduct" under the
"lascivious exhibition of the genitals or public area" prong.
United States v. Hotal
- The search warrant triggering event for its execution is necessary.
United States v. Lacy
- Staleness/Probable cause.
United States v. Mitchell
- Sting operation known as Project Looking Glass did not constitute
outrageous government conduct.
United States v. Poehlman
United States v. Ruddell
- Anticipatory search warrants
United States v. Weber
- In this case, the "expert" testimony in the affidavit
was foundationless. It consisted of rambling boilerplate recitations
designed to meet all law enforcement needs.
United States v. Tank
- The sufficiency of the foundation for admission into evidence of
chat room log printouts.
State of Washington v. Townsend
Recording chats/emails and factial impossibitity
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