Alex Kozinski |
The chief judge in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Alex Kozinski, has suspended a closely watched obscenity trial in Los Angeles federal court after being caught posting sexually explicit photos and videos on his own website.
Kozinski granted a 48-hour stay in the obscenity trial of filmmaker Ira Isaacs following a request from the prosecutor, the Los Angeles Times reported today.
The district attorney said he sought time to explore "a potential conflict of interest concerning the court having a … sexually explicit website with similar material to what is on trial here," according to the paper.
When first confronted by the Times' reporters, the judge said he would take some images down, and he later had public access to the site blocked. However, today's report said Kozinski's explanation was shifting, and by yesterday afternoon, he was attributing some of the images uploaded to his son, Yale.
"Yale called and said he's pretty sure he uploaded a bunch of it," the judge told a legal news website called Abovethelaw.com. "I had no idea, but that sounds right because I sure don't remember putting some of that stuff there."
But the newspaper report said the judge previously acknowledged in an interview he had posted materials that included photographs of nude women on all fours painted to look like cows.
The 57-year-old jurist told the Times he thought the site "was for his private storage and that he was not aware the images could be seen by the public."
In the pending obscenity case, Isaacs is accused of distributing criminally obscene sexual-fetish videos, including bestiality, the Times said.
The paper also reported one of the images it found on the judge's site was of a partly nude man cavorting with animals.
New York University law professor Stephen Gillers, who specializes in legal ethics, told the Times the judge no longer should be on the case.
"The public can reasonably question his objectivity," he said.
But Gillers also told the L.A. paper he believed Kozinski when he said he did not know the site was available to the public.
"This is going to upset a lot of people," Gillers told the Times.
When first confronted by the paper, Kozinki said he would delete some material, including the photographs depicting women as cows, which he called "gross," as well as a graphic pictorial of a woman shaving her pubic hair.
The judge insisted to the newspaper those images must have been uploaded accidentally.
"I would not keep those files intentionally," he said.
The newspaper said its review of the site, before access was blocked, found public sex, contortionist sex and masturbation.
Kozinski rose to the highest position in the 9th Circuit last year after his appointment to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. He previously argued against court administrators' decisions to place filters on court computers to block pornography.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, reacted to the website discoveries in a prepared statement.
"If this is true, this is unacceptable behavior for a federal court judge," she said.
The Times said that 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."
The sexual content of the site was revealed by typing in the name of a subdirectory, reporters said.
Â
Special offers:
Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws (Paperback)
So Help Me God: The Ten Commandments, Judicial Tyranny, and the Battle for Religious Freedom
Â
Previous story
Chief judge ogles nude women painted as cows
Â