Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Litigation Blogs -> How Appealing

Litigation

: How Appealing

"Just Looking: Should Internet Ignorance Be a Defense to Child Porn Charges?"

"Just Looking: Should Internet Ignorance Be a Defense to Child Porn Charges?" That was the title of the December 4, 2006 installment of my "On Appeal" column for law.com. Therein, I criticized the ruling of a three-judge panel of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania setting aside a criminal conviction in a case captioned Commonwealth v. Diodoro.

Thereafter, the Pa. Superior Court granted rehearing en banc, and later the en banc court affirmed the defendant's conviction by means of a 7-2 ruling.

In late December 2007, as I originally reported in this post, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania issued an order granting the defendant's petition for allowance of appeal to decide "[w]hether accessing and viewing child pornography over the internet constitutes 'control' of such pornography under 18 Pa.C.S. sec. 6312(d)?"

Yesterday, a unanimous Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, by a vote of 4-0, affirmed the en banc Superior Court's decision upholding the defendant's conviction. You can access yesterday's ruling at this link.

The Associated Press has coverage of yesterday's ruling in an article headlined "Pa. court: Just viewing child porn's a crime; based on Delco case." And in earlier coverage of the case, The Delaware County (Pa.) Times has previously published articles headlined "Superior Court rules Ridley man 'possessed' child porn" and "State appeals court to review conviction in child porn case."

Full post as published by How Appealing on May 27, 2009 (boomark / email).