Kline Pleads Guilty in Porn Case

Choking back tears, former Orange County Superior Court Judge Ronald C. Kline pleaded guilty Monday to illegally possessing child pornography on his home computer.

Under terms of a plea deal with federal prosecutors, Kline, 64, will face up to 33 months in prison when he is sentenced in March.

Kline, who has been under court-ordered home confinement since his arrest in 2001, also will be required to register as a sex offender.

The former jurist broke down while he was being asked to acknowledge the details of his crime during an appearance before U.S. District Judge Consuelo B. Marshall in Los Angeles.

Flanked by his lawyers, he sipped a cup of water, regained his composure and went on to answer the judge’s questions.

Kline did not speak to reporters after the hearing. But his attorneys, Paul S. Meyer and Janet I. Levine, distributed a written statement saying that their client had fully accepted responsibility for his actions.

“In many ways, he has already been punished for his conduct,” Meyer added.

“He has been on strict home confinement and electronic monitoring for over four years, he lost his position as a judge, and by this plea he has forfeited all state contributions to his pension.”

Kline was arrested after a Canadian hacker broke into his home computer and discovered hundreds of images of young boys engaged in sexual acts.

Bradley Willman, a self-described “computer cop,” then forwarded his findings to a Colorado-based Internet watchdog group, Pedowatch, which relayed the information to Irvine police, who searched Kline’s home, seized his computer and arrested him.

In a legal battle that lasted four years, Kline sought to suppress the prosecution’s evidence by contending that Willman, acting as a government agent, had violated his 4th Amendment privacy rights.

In 2003, Judge Marshall tossed out most of the evidence. But last year the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overruled Marshall, which resurrected the case.

The appeals court found that Willman had acted on his own. “Searches by private individuals are subject to the 4th Amendment only if the private individual is acting as an instrument or agent of the government at the time of the search,” the court said.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined this year to hear Kline’s appeal.