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Should The Los Angeles Times be praised or condemned for reporting that it discovered pornographic images posted online at Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski's personal web site, and what if anything makes that discovery newsworthy?

Should The Los Angeles Times be praised or condemned for reporting that it discovered pornographic images posted online at Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski's personal web site, and what if anything makes that discovery newsworthy? As I understand The LATimes article, the images were freely accessible to anyone who knew where on Judge Kozinski's site to find them, but Judge Kozinski was not actively promoting the images for viewing by the general public.

Readers of this blog are invited to share their views via email [appellateblog@hotmail.com] on any or all of the following issues, and I will post to this blog any thoughtful responses:

• Is this story newsworthy merely because a federal judge has posted pornographic images on the internet where the public can access them, even though the images are not readily available to anyone who does not know precisely where to look on the web site that the judge operates?
• Is this story newsworthy only because the judge in question is currently presiding over an obscenity trial, even though none of the images on the judge's personal web site have been reported to be obscene?
• Should The Los Angeles Times have published this article?
• Forget about the purient aspects of this story, is the story newsworthy because a federal appellate judge may have engaged in copyright infringement by posting images presumably belonging to others on his personal web site?
• Should publication of this article in The Los Angeles Times cause Judge Kozinski to recuse or to at least survey the jury to ensure that the jury can remain fair to both the prosecution and the defendant in the ongoing obscenity prosecution over which he is now presiding?
• For any criminal procedure gurus in the audience, if Judge Kozinski decides to recuse from presiding over the criminal obscenity prosecution in which a jury has already been selected and perhaps seated, can a new judge be brought in to take over the trial from that point forward, or will it be necessary to declare a mistrial and start over?
• Can the defendant in the obscenity prosecution successfully assert double jeopardy to avoid another trial if Judge Kozinski concludes that he has no other choice but to recuse and that the ground for recusal is not subject to waiver by the parties?
• Should this type of news coverage disqualify one from consideration to fill a future U.S. Supreme Court vacancy?

Some may recall that Judge Kozinski was in the news in 2001 for opposing the central monitoring of internet usage in federal judges' chambers. Neil A. Lewis covered the matter in articles that you can access here and here (and see box 25 of the L. Ralph Mecham papers). And Judge Kozinski is credited with advising David Lat on how Lat could avoid having the source of Lat's internet access revealed when Lat was sending emails using the "Article III Groupie" persona.

In the most recent coverage of today's news, The Associated Press reports that "9th Circuit judge had sexual images on Web page." Wired.com's "Threat Level" blog has a post titled "Chief Judge in Obscenity Case Caught Posting Porn." And Slate has reposted Judge Kozinski's 1996 Slate Diary with the teaser "When the California Porn Judge Went to a Lingerie Party." Back in 1985, when Judge Kozinski was confirmed to the Ninth Circuit at the age of 35 by a vote of 54 to 43, Ben A. Franklin had this interesting report in The New York Times.

Full post as published by How Appealing on June 11, 2008 (boomark / email).