‘Obscene’ U.S. Manga Collector Jailed 6 Months

Ephidel said:
Heh, Monad already said pretty much everything I wanted to say far, far better than I could have ^^

Which leaves me free to ramble! :P

I honestly think the entire thing took on a life of its own and got blown entirely out of proportion, going far, far further than it had any right to... because how far it had a right to go was effectively nowhere; The only bit I have no issue with about the whole thing really is that they opened his mail, because I'm pretty sure mail checks are standard procedure.
Okay, maybe I can see going around to his house from there if they were a bit iffy about it, but once they found that there was no child porn that should have been the end of it.

From looking at his personal history over at ANN, he sounds like he was quite a normal guy; graduated, time in the navy, a degree, long term employment... one of those 'contributing members of society' folks that people normally look upon quite favourably. At least until all this started. Played games and read comics in his spare time. Wow, how dangerous.
He just also happened to have a manga collection containing lots of stuff, from lots of genres. Who the hell cares if some of it was hentai, and if some of that was lolicon hentai?
Whoever it is that should care, the courts isn't it. The courts shouldn't because its completely irrelevant.
I guess at least the courts threw out the obscenity charges ¬_¬

Even the sentence is a joke.
If you think he should never have been charged in the first place, its too long.
Taking it from the other angle though, if the courts really thought he really was some sort of danger to others because of this then sentencing him to six months is pointless. What good would six months actually do if that were the case?

If the guy had real bestiality and/or child porn in his collection, I would say by all means go and lambaste the guy's taste, morals, or lack thereof, and throw the book at him if thats what you so desire. He would have deserved it.
As it stands, he didn't. There was nothing to throw the book at... and yet somehow they seem to have managed anyway.

Children are harmed by child porn.
Nobody is harmed in the making of loli hentai manga. Or shota hentai. Or the Kemono for whatever animal sex anthology.
Nobody is harmed in the owning of it, and nobody is harmed in the shipping of it across state lines unless it happens to be in a rather large box that falls on someones head along the way.

That whole "psychological evaluation" as part of a "treatment programme" for his deviancy though? Eugh. That bothers me more than I'd have expected it to.
The "we'll polygraph you until we think you're normal like the rest of us" implication is an entirely separate very dodgy kettle of fish and I don't really know where to start on it :|
(Not to mention that the "although honest with what he reported, [he] was not disclosing enough to gain a complete picture of the nature and extent of [his] sexual deviancy … The main finding from the testing results is that Mr. Handley produced a guarded, defensive, and evasive profile. His test taking behavior suggests there is likely more to know about him than he is willing to disclose at this time" part either.
The way I'm reading it, that reeks of 'guilty until proven innocent' x_x)

Over on The Yaoi Review's article on the subject the comments suggest that all the polygraphing gender identity crap is because his fantasies were about being the manga girls, rather than watching things happen to them.

Does it make me strange that I don't actually consider that to be that strange? :x
Have I just become entirely too comfortable with the fact that if I read a book of any type, I am probably going to identify myself with a character, or multiple characters? The fact I might be reading a trashy bodice ripper or some yaoi or some hentai isn't really going to change that most of the time, regardless of what gender the characters may be :|

I just... dislike the idea of him being tested to make him normal. What is normal? For that matter, what is deviancy?
People have all sorts of fantasies about all sorts of kinks. Some of them sure as hell aren't for me, but I don't care if they have them. What people do behind closed doors is their own business so long as it isn't harming anyone :|


Meeeeeh, I guess I just find the entire thing very, very iffy.
All the outrage people seem to have against some of it seems laughable to me as well.
Omg, he read loli/shota/whatever!

I honestly doubt many people who've dabbled in reading hentai haven't. Even if they weren't looking for it (sure, the ones with the "I love my mummy and my mummy loves me" story names might give the game away, just maybe but theres plenty with less obvious names too :P)

Or even going towards the more 'normal' hentai, in which a large number seem to take place in schools (how old are people in schools again?)

Even ignoring the generic "All characters are of age of consent" warning, even some of the manga (hentai and non-hentai) published in the US has the token "I'm over 18. Really. Really. Even though I look about 13 and as flat as a board. I'm even older than that buxtom older looking girl over there! I'm just... vertically and hormonally challenged!" characters.
Does 18, 22, 30 or 300 really make a difference when I assume its the visual cue which matters?

Then doujinshi comes along and throws another spanner into the works for good measure.
If you've ever read doujinshi based on series, any series, most of what gets scanned is hentai.
Sailor Moon... Gundam SEED... Haruhi... F/SN... Naruto... Nanoha...
If you take a look at those doujinshi you might have read 'more critically' just how old were that anime's cast...

Iri said:
While I certainly don't blame the fellow for going ahead and taking the plea deal, it would have really been fascinating to see how this would have played out from a legal perspective.

TL;DR observations:

As a caveat to foreign (and some domestic) readers, the true nature of this case is somewhat more complex than the simple 'possession' model heretofore given. This is a pure obscenity case as defined under U.S. Code, and while depictions of children are mentioned, makes no attempt to tie his crime to standing child pornography laws. It is for this reason that he will not have to register as a sex offender. However, the Code also directly references the penalty recommendations for corresponding child pornography infractions and therefore becomes a de facto child pornography case from the defendant's perspective, although not a de jure one.

The law that was broken in this case was not one of possession, but one of transport and receipt. It is somewhat of a peculiarity of the USA's type of federalism that the national government can exert the most power upon people only when a state or national border is crossed, via the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. The statute under which he was prosecuted required that interstate/international transport and receipt, and he was required to stipulate as such under his plea arrangement. If he had not left Iowa and perhaps bought the same manga at some Iowa version of Comiket, then the federal government could not have brought suit (This is also how the government could prosecute you for downloading the same content via the Internet, excluding the possibility that the complete transmission path from server to you did not cross a state line.) I know this differentiation between 'possession' and 'receipt and transport' would come as little solace to him and for most would seem to be a trivial distinction, but it might have been very important had this trail proceeded up the appeals ladder.

In June 2008 the defendant's attorney (Eric Chase -- who is NOT a local Iowa public defender, but rather a high-priced Hollywood attorney who shows up as a talking head legal analyst often on the cable news networks) filed the standard dismissal motions that gave a hint at what might have occurred if the case had proceeded. His arguments, which were fairly cogent, were threefold. The first third hinged on the case of Stanley v. Georgia (1969) in which the Supreme Court held that private possession of obscene materials (at least the ones that do not break child pornography laws) was protected under the 1st and 14th Amendments. However, any glance at Supreme Court rulings on obscenity since Stanley quickly reveals that the Court has be disjointed and inconsistent in its opinions since then and it is questionable whether Stanley is still followed today.

The next part involved the most 'famous' obscenity case, Miller v. California (1973) This case set up a three-prong test on whether something was obscene, involving (1) whether an average person would find it appeals to a "prurient interest"; (2) whether it portrays acts specifically defined as illegal by local laws; and (3) whether it lacks literary or artistic value. Chase's argument was that the state bypassed formal finding in the first two criteria and instituted a "per se" obscenity standard by listing the particular acts in the law. I am not sure whether Chase would have insisted that the government would have proven every single act in each manga met each standard of the Miller test, but that could have been a possibility. In any event, the judge eventually struck this part of the law down as unconstitutional, but not before the defendant had agreed to plead guilty, although this ruling might affect anyone charged under this subsection in the future.

The last argument, which I think might have been the strongest if not most interesting one, was based on the vagueness of the definition of "minor" as applied to fictional characters. This one referenced City of Chicago v. Morales (1999) as an example that laws cannot be so nebulous or vague as to escape the understanding of ordinary people. The defendant's side stipulated that the definition of "minor" in reference to humans was clear and uncontested, but that changes in this case. The argument, as given, was:

The government’s definition of a “minor” as “a child under eighteen (18) years old” loses its meaning when the “minor” at issue is not real. Fictional characters depicted in drawings have no age, and it would be difficult, if not impossible, for a defendant (let alone a jury) to discern the intended age of persons who do not exist.

It would have been very interesting to see how the courts would have approached this last line of reasoning in particular.

This was certainly a very sad and frustrating case for those involved and I sincerely hope the defendant will be able to rebuild his life upon release. I suspect that the prosecution was proceeding on overall honorable intentions but was stifled by an incomplete understanding of the true facts of the case. This was seen in an early motion by his pre-trial officer to imprison him before trial because he had visited sites like Animesuki, Animenation, and Animenewsnetwork that had advertisements for and mentions of hentai. One particular ad cited by the authorities was for the show GaoGiaGar: King of Braves. The ad, which is one of those little random corner things you see on Animenewsnetwork, and is likely still there, describes the show like this:

"Unlike Godanner, GaoGiaGar isn't aimed at those fans that have grown up and developed a taste for extreme fan-service and romantic drama; its aimed at the fans that never grew up at all. Don't hide it you know who you are...."

If I were were a US attorney whose job it was to prosecute people, would I read that as having an sinister connotation? I don't know, but they apparently chose to do so.

Although I doubt it, hopefully something good will come out of all of this, even if it is only to give us a pause for thought on the nature of our civil liberties.