Federal judge lands in hot water over explicit images on Web site

Computerworld - In an incident that highlights how almost nothing that one does on the Internet is private, the chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has recused himself from an obscenity trial after the Los Angeles Times reported last week that it had found a cache of sexually explicit images on his personal Web site.

Judge Alex Kozinski, who was presiding over the case as part of a process under which he and other appeals court judges are assigned to handle some criminal trials, also asked the 9th Circuit's judicial council to conduct an investigation into the controversy, presumably to see if his actions constituted any ethical violations.

In his recusal note, Kozinski said his decision was spurred by the "public controversy" surrounding his involvement in the obscenity trial. "I have concluded that there is a manifest necessity to declare a mistrial," he wrote, adding that he would ask the chief judge of the 9th Circuit District Court to reassign the case to another judge.

Kozinski, who in media reports and blogs is described as an ardent supporter of First Amendment rights, found himself in the middle of the controversy last week after the Times published its story reporting that images of a sexual nature had been posted on a publicly accessible Web site with the URL http://alex.kozinski.com. The site apparently was maintained by the judge and members of his family.

The Times described many of the images that it found on the site as "crudely humorous." For instance, the newspaper reported that the material included a photo of two nude women painted to look like cows, plus other photos and at least one video featuring nude or semi-clad men and women. Access to the Web site was disabled after the story appeared, but not before numerous bloggers had grabbed some of the images and put them on their sites.

The images were stored in a separate folder that the judge apparently believed wasn't directly accessible via the Web. In comments made to the Times, Kozinksi said that the images were meant to be shared with some of his friends and that they included material he himself had received from others over time. He also said in a statement that some of the images might have been uploaded by his adult son, while others might have been posted on the site inadvertently.

The Times was alerted to the availability of the images by an attorney from Beverly Hills, Calif., with whom Kozinski has had a running feud for the past few years over an opinion column that the judge wrote for a legal publication.