Judge Presiding Over Obscenity Case Has Similar Private Pornography Accessible To The Public

The judge presiding over a Los Angeles case to decide if producing and distributing films depicting bestiality and defecation are criminally obscene, has admitted to having similar pornography posted online which was publicly accessible.

Recent reports of a man going on trial, Ira Isaacs, to decide if the films he admitted to producing and distributing, including bestiality and defecation, is criminally obscene, and the case takes a strange twist when the judge presiding over the case, Alex Kozinski, is found to have posted publicly accessible pornography and videos.

Even more interesting is some of that material included, "a photo of 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."

Kozinski is 57 years old and asserts that he believed the material he posted was not accessible to the public, although he did admit to having shared some of that material with friends, via the site.

Kozinski declined to comment when he was asked if this should force him to step down from the highly public obscenity trial he is to preside over.

Stephen Gillers, a New York University law professor who specializes in legal ethics, told The Times 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.

Kozinski says he will delete some of the material on the site, including the image where women are depicted as cows, which he claims he finds degrading and gross and he claims that he must have uploaded those pictures to his server accidentally, saying, "I would not keep those files intentionally."

He maintains that none of the material on his site is "obscene" and stating, "Is it prurient? I don't know what to tell you. I think it's odd and interesting. It's part of life."

Kozinski has since blocked public access to his website, http://alex.kozinski.com.

So the question of what is and isn't considered criminally obscene aside, should a man that has photos of women depicted as cows and a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal that he "mistakenly" had accessible to the public, be presiding over a case where the jury has to decide is bestiality (sexual relations between a person and an animal) and defecation films are considered criminally obscene?

Or should he recuse himself?

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