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Man Charged with Producing Child Porn for Obscene Lyrics
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Evan Emory next Monday will plead to a lesser charge that doesn't involve state prison or sex offender registration, if discussions between Emory's attorney and the Muskegon County prosecutor bear fruit and a judge approves.
"We're looking at a plea to a lesser charge, (with Emory) receiving (county) jail, probation and significant community service," Muskegon County Prosecutor Tony Tague said Tuesday. The conviction would not require Emory to register as a sex offender, Tague said.
Emory's lawyer, Terry J. Nolan, could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday morning. However, Nolan told The New York Times that such a resolution is being discussed.
Emory is the 21-year-old Ravenna-area man who posted on YouTube an edited video that made it appear he was singing a sexually graphic song to a class of first-graders at Ravenna's Beechnau Elementary School. Emory has said he meant it as humor.
tony-tague.jpgTony Tague
The original charge — manufacturing child pornography — carries a maximum possible penalty of 20 years in prison, although state sentencing guidelines likely would lead to a much lighter term for Emory, who has no prior criminal record. A conviction does require registering as a sex offender for 25 years.
Emory on Monday waived his 60th District Court preliminary examination on that charge, causing his case to be bound over for trial in Muskegon County's 14th Circuit Court. The preliminary hearing had been scheduled for March 16.
Instead, Emory will be scheduled for circuit-court arraignment next Monday. If the plea negotiations lead to a resolution, Emory at that time will plead to the lesser charge. Such a plea would require approval by whichever circuit judge is assigned to the case.
Nolan Tague said the plea negotiations came after he met several times with parents of the children in the video. "We are in agreement that want to send a strong message that you do not exploit children in sexually suggestive videos, but do not want to ruin Mr. Emory’s life," Tague said.
Tague said he was influenced by the fact that a search warrant executed on Emory's home and computer by the Muskegon County Sheriff's Office did not turn up any evidence of child pornography.
However, he is still pushing for jail time and other punishment. “I feel strongly that the children were exploited in this situation, and there has to be a price to pay,” Tague said.
TLDR: 21-year-old is approved to sing some songs for a class. Songs are perfectly fine. He later makes a music video with obscene lyrics and splices video of the kids reacting to his approved performances into the new performance making it appear that they're reacting to the objectionable lyrics.
No child was touched, no nudity was shown, the children never even heard the objectionable lyrics yet the Michigan Prosecutor, Nolan Tague, charged him with producing child pornography. They found absolutely no evidence of child porn on his computer and he's never been in trouble before. They're currently working on a plea deal, but despite absolutely no one being harmed in any meaningful way, he's still pushing for jail time.
What. The. Fuck. America?
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The only acceptable result here is this being thrown out on obvious 1st amendment grounds and then the prosecutor and everyone else involved being sued for wrongful arrest, malicious prosecution, contempt of court, and generally being incompetent fucking pricks.
I'm likely to think that the quoted section of your original post with regards to:
Is likely the driving force behind this whole thing, at which point I'd ask what the fuck kind of justice system is this where the level of outrage from non-victims is the deciding factor in deciding what charges to throw up against the wall. I'm surprised the kid and his lawyer are even considering a plea deal and simply telling the guy to fuck off.
Another article on this:
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If there is anything right or just in the world, the charges will be dropped and everyone involved will lose their jobs.
America: Where offending someone makes you a sex offender. Meanwhile the movie "Serbian Film" is still legally available
This is madness. I don't understand why they are working on a plea deal. This seems like something that would easily be thrown out on 1st amendment grounds, especially due to the total lack of proof that he in any way harmed the kids in his video.
Also, thank you for reminding me of "Serbian Film" I have never seen it, but I listened to a discussion about it on the Film Vault podcast a while back and had just managed to forget what a messed up movie it was.
I'd be pretty furious too.
So fuck Michigan.
If the parents were mad about their kids being used in the video, there's plenty of ways in civil courts to try and get restitution.
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The law should not be used as an arbiter of taste.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
I don't know what the lyrics are, but they would have to be pretty vile before I could see how this situation fits under the term of abuse.
Sounds like someone is trying to improve his/her career by getting tough on child abusers, and not really picky about how it occurs.
edit: If the lyrics matt posted a couple posts up are accurate then this guy is an idiot, but not deserving of the label child abuser.
At least in Europe you can't just take footage of people and use it for whatever the hell you want without them agreeing to it.
Well, good for them!
I would totally vote for any district attorney that pursues this line of prosecution. In fact, I don't think they've gone far enough. I say we ban all movies - or indeed all forms of record-keeping and communication: books, movies, songs, drawings, speech, sign language, smoke signals, etc. - in which the concept of sex and children exist next to each other. No work of fiction should contain both minors and sex, even if the two are unrelated and separated by a thousand pages/minutes/whatever.
In communication, one must wait at least two months before talking about or to children if one has discussed the act of love-making. If actual sex occurred, one must wait at least two years. If a woman becomes pregnant due to sex, she must get an abortion or go to jail for child pornography.
Procreation can only happen by way of in-vitro fertilization or some sort of mechanical incubator.
This should become law right now. Prosecutors should arrest the journalists who wrote the articles about a fictional movie about a man singing objectionable material to children. Every post in this thread should be purged from the internet and we should all be arrested for writing posts in response to a newspaper article about a fictional movie about a man singing objectionable material to children.
I'm not saying it'll be easy, but it can be done. The cases will take years to prosecute, since prosecution, defense, judge, and jury require intervals of two months before the concept of child pornography can be communicated. It could take up to two decades to successfully put someone in jail for this, during which time that person should be put in isolation lest he or she infects innocents with the concept (or meme) of child pornography.
I am willing to go to jail for this post. For the greater good. For the children.
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It's made of dil-dough!
It almost seems like there's a lack of checks in the system to make sure the charges are remotely in the vicinity of the crime... if this is even a crime at all.
Attempting to ruin someone's life like that should pull the Prosecutor into the line of fire and see him fighting to stay out of jail too, you shouldn't be able to pull this stuff in a free country.
Example: I was charged with "Threatening Behavior" for practicing music to loud.
It wouldn't hold in court but it would cost way more than just pleading out.
There's
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There's quite a difference between something like that and this. "Threatening behavior" doesn't sound like something that has jailtime attached to it, or requiring you to be a registered sex offender, etc.
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Me too.
But yeah someone is having criminal charges filed over this is dumb and if I were one of the parents I'd be telling the other parents exactly the same thing only porbably with more "you fucking idiots" thrown in.
Here we go, the 2nd half of this vid: http://tosh.comedycentral.com/video-clips/dancing-naked-in-the-rain
Now, he's obviously not actually exposing himself to 3 children. But according to this law, shouldn't he be charged as well?
Or Kevin Smith for the video store list in Clerks.
I'm sure the list goes on and on.
I guess the difference there is that the kids are in on it.
But it still seems an unreasonable response.
That's Ed Norton and Robin Williams, although Danny DeVito does appear in that movie.
Same concept really.
Someone does something that is not against the law but pisses off a cop so they charge him with something stupid that wouldn't stand up in court but would cost more money to fight than to just plead out.
You're arguing on the assumption that one of the parents was a police officer, which has not been established.
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He's saying the concept is similar (being fucked with for no good reason by people who shouldn't be doing it).
I'm not really sure why mind you but yeah :P
"I'm gonna grape you in the mouth!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjbkl7Ng_ZY&feature=related
I can understand outrage over the image of the children being used inappropriately and without the parents' consent, but really this is ...huge. The children didn't hear it so it's all good on that front.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvAwV2VsTvk&feature=fvst
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLvGMVlOy0A
Oh shit! Netflix is distributing child porn!
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Oh sorry, I must have been kinda unclear. Maybe the long form of my story will help.
I was practicing with my band one night when a cop showed up and tried to give me a ticket for a noise violation (50 buck fine). I told him that the shed I was renting was to far away from any houses for the noise violation (I checked, that's why we practiced there). The cop then gave me a ticket for "threatening behavior" as in I was threatening my neighbor with phisical violence by playing my music too loud.
Anyway the rest of my band paid 500 dollar fines and walked away. I lawyered up for 1500 dollars we walked into court and the prosecution withdrew the charges.
So take all that and put a zero on the end of all the money and you have the case we are disscusing.
The first amendment is safe and no one thinks this guy is a child pornographer.
Danny Devito produced and directed that movie.
Anyway, I agree with what others have said: this may have violated some law about getting parental consent before publishing video of children, but it's certainly not child porn, and this whole thing is fucking ridiculous.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
The parents probably signed waivers, without reading them.
If the waiver disclosed this sort of thing might happen then too fucking bad for them. If the waiver is really vague then there might be some legal wiggle-room argument for civil court, but certainly not for criminal charges.
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But there was no particular waiver with regard to him taking the video tape of that perfectly fine performance and then editing it for his own purposes (not sure how there could be, given that it was done after the fact).
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Then as I said, plenty of things they can take him to civil court over, but I can't think of anything to charge him with in criminal courts - if there is anything, certainly nothing as harsh as a felony.
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I think that all a civil suit could do is get him to take down the video.
I can't think of how this could be damaging.