US:AN OBSCENITY trial in the Los Angeles federal court has been suspended after the judge acknowledged maintaining his own publicly accessible website featuring sexually explicit photos and videos.
Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, granted a 48-hour stay in the obscenity trial of a Hollywood adult filmmaker after the prosecutor requested time to explore "a potential conflict of interest concerning the court having a . . . sexually explicit website with similar material to what is on trial here".
In an interview on Tuesday with the Los Angeles Times, Judge Kozinski acknowledged posting sexual content on his website. Among the images were a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows and a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal. He defended some of the adult content as "funny" but conceded that other postings were inappropriate.
Judge Kozinski (57) said he thought the site was for his private storage and he was not aware the images could be seen by the public, although he also said he had shared some material on the site with friends. After the interview, he blocked public access to the site.
Judge Kozinski is one of the US's highest-ranking judges and has been mentioned as a possible candidate for the US Supreme Court. He is considered a judicial conservative on most issues.
After publication of an latimes.com article about his website on Wednesday morning, the judge offered another explanation for how the material might have been posted to the site. He had told the Timesthat he had a clear recollection of some of the most objectionable material and that he was responsible for placing it on the web.
By Wednesday, he was seeking to shift responsibility, at least in part, to his adult son, Yale.
"Yale called and said he's pretty sure he uploaded a bunch of it," Judge Kozinski wrote in an e-mail to Abovethelaw.com, a legal news website. "I had no idea, but that sounds right because I sure don't remember putting some of that stuff there."
Stephen Gillers, a New York University law professor who specialises in legal ethics and has known Judge Kozinski for years, called him "a treasure of the federal judiciary". Prof Gillers said he took the judge at his word that he did not know the site was publicly available, but he said Judge Kozinski was "seriously negligent" in allowing it to be discovered.
The judge said it was strictly by chance that he wound up presiding over the trial of filmmaker Ira Isaacs in US District Court in Los Angeles. Mr Isaacs is on trial for distributing sexual fetish videos. The material is considerably more vulgar than the content posted on Judge Kozinski's website.
The judge said he did not think any of the material he posted would qualify as obscene.The sexually explicit material was extensive, including images of masturbation, public sex and contortionist sex. -