A teenage boy has been prosecuted for having nude photos - of himself - on his phone.
The 17 year old was charged with possessing indecent images of a minor – the minor being himself – and was tried under adult felony laws for sexually exploiting a minor, The Guardian reports.
Cormega Copening faced four charges of making and possessing images of himself, and one of possessing one naked image of his girlfriend.
The high school student from North Carolina was 16 when police discovered the pictures on his phone, during an investigation into the sharing of sexual imagery being shared at the school without the consent of those pictured. The investigation found that Copening was not involved in that issue.
Copening’s girlfriend was also prosecuted and struck a plea deal. She was sentenced to community service, fined $200, ordered to stay in school and refrain from sue of drugs or alcohol, while also taking a class in decision making.
Copening is believed to have received a similar array of punishments after he struck a plea deal with the court to avoid a possible custodial sentence and being placed on the sex offenders register.
Legal experts have derided the judgment, and case in general, as ludicrous.
“It’s dysfunctional to be charged with possession of your own image,” Justin Patchin, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Wisconsin told The Guardian.
Patchin said he, and other legal experts, said they were aware of “zero examples” of cases such as this, with under-18s charged for possessing a naked image of themselves.
“Kids should not be charged for that,” Patchin said.
“And you don’t want kids to be sending such pictures to their significant others, but I don’t think it should be a criminal offense where there is no victim.”
Fred Lane, a computer security and privacy expert told The Guardian:
“There are about 10 or 12 mostly conservative states where they will prosecute kids for this and it’s a kind of moral values thing – they are trying to make an example of them because it’s believed to be inappropriate behaviour.
“There is a streak of moralising that runs through this country that is disturbing sometimes," he said.
The legal situations surrounding the taking and ending of such images is complex, with federal law and state law not always in sync, and generally yet to catch up with social changes brought about by technological changes – such as naked selfies.
Federal child abuse felony laws apply across the US, but 20 states have enacted legislation to protect teenagers who share naked pictures with one another and with nobody exploited by the sharing and possession of the images.
