Judge Posts Sexually Explicit Material on his Website- The Fallout

Special thanks to the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog writer Dan Slater for this post. This is a great example of why all legal professionals need to understand the powerful and dangerous tools and pitfalls of social media.

The L.A. Times is reporting that Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, who is currently presiding over an obscenity trial in Los Angeles, has maintained a publicly accessible Web site featuring sexually explicit photos and videos.

Kozinski, 57, acknowledged in an interview with the LAT that he had posted the materials, which included a photo of a 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. Some of the material was inappropriate, he conceded, although he defended other sexually explicit content as “funny.”

He said that he thought the site was for his private storage and that 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 Tuesday evening, Kozinski, who pointed out that he never used appeals court computers to maintain the Web site, blocked public access to the site.

Asked whether the contents of his site should prompt him to step aside from the pending obscenity trial, Kozinski declined to comment. Opening statements in the trial were scheduled for this morning. In the case, Ira Isaacs, a filmmaker based in Los Angeles, is accused of distributing criminally obscene sexual-fetish videos depicting bestiality and defecation. (For background on the Isaacs case, click here for an AP story.)

Before the site was taken down, visitors to http://alex.kozinski.com were greeted with the message: “Ain’t nothin’ here. Y’all best be movin’ on, compadre.”

Stephen Gillers, a New York University law professor who specializes in legal ethics, told the LAT that Kozinski should recuse himself from the Isaacs case because “the public can reasonably question his objectivity” concerning the issues at hand. Gillers, who has known Kozinski for years and called him “a treasure of the federal judiciary,” said he took the judge at his word that he did not know the site was publicly available. But he said Kozinski was “seriously negligent” in allowing it to be discovered.

“The phrase ’sober as a judge’ resonates with the American public,” Gillers said. “We don’t want them to reveal their private selves publicly. This is going to upset a lot of people.”

Kozinski told the LAT he would delete some material from his site, including the photo depicting women as cows, which he said was “degrading . . . and just gross.” He also said he planned to get rid of a graphic step-by-step pictorial in which a woman is seen shaving her pubic hair.

Kozinski told the LAT that he didn’t think any of the material he posted on his website would qualify as obscene. “Is it prurient? I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “I think it’s odd and interesting. It’s part of life.”