Child Pornography Charge Defenses

Answer:

In Texas, when someone calls and says that they think they’re going to be charged with possession of child pornography, but they do not believe they possessed child pornography, one of the topics that is raised is the age of the people. Were they somebody that you thought was an adult but looked young? The reason that that’s important is that you can be charged with possession of child pornography if the person pictured is under the age of 18. For instance, a 16 or 17-year-old can obviously look much older. I’ve hired experts in the past to address that issue in front of the court, because the experts will tell you that it is normal for a male to be attracted to a post-pubescent person. A post-pubescent person can obviously look like an adult. However, that’s not necessarily a defense in these cases.

It’s really important to develop the fact that if you possessed images of someone that might be, for instance, 16, that you are not a predator and society’s not at risk because you posses those images. Sometimes you can get a prosecutor to drop or even reduce charges when all the images are post-pubescent. If some of the images that you possess are prepubescent, that causes a problem because it takes away the argument that you’re not attracted to obviously underage children. In those cases, we’re going to fight about how they obtained the images and how the images got on your computer, but the offense itself doesn’t require that they be very young children. The offense only requires that they be under the age of 18.