Internet Exec’s Child Porn Conviction Tossed Out

A federal judge overturned former Internet executive Patrick J. Naughton’s child pornography conviction Friday, citing a recent appellate ruling that found a portion of a federal law unconstitutional.

The ruling wipes away the only conviction the government achieved in its initial prosecution of Naughton last month, which ended with jurors deadlocked on two other counts that charged Naughton with using the Internet to solicit sex from a minor.

Judge Edward Rafeedie of the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles expressed reluctance to clear Naughton’s conviction, but said he was bound by court doctrine that requires a new trial when an individual is convicted under a law that is subsequently ruled unconstitutional, even in part.

Naughton, former executive vice president of Walt Disney Co.’s Go.com Internet site, is now scheduled for a new trial beginning March 21 on the same three felony counts he faced in the first.

The charges stem from an investigation last year in which an FBI agent posed online as a 13-year-old girl and corresponded with Naughton for seven months in a chat room called “Dadanddaughtersex.”

Naughton, 34, was arrested in September after showing up at Santa Monica Pier for what authorities say he expected to be a sexual rendezvous with a minor. After his arrest, agents searched his laptop computer and say they found at least 10 pornographic images of children.

The day after Naughton was convicted, a federal appeals court in San Francisco tossed out a portion of the federal child pornography statute. The justices ruled that although the government can outlaw pornographic pictures of children, it cannot proscribe images that only “appear to be” children but are actually computer-generated.

“The evidence at [Naughton’s] trial dealt only with pornographic images of actual children,” Rafeedie said. But under case law, he said, “if any clause of a statute is unconstitutional, a general verdict of guilty under the statute cannot be upheld.”

Rafeedie placed one condition on his ruling, however, saying that the conviction would be reinstated if the appellate court ruling on the child porn statute is reversed before Naughton’s retrial begins.

Donald Marks, one of Naughton’s attorneys, said he was “gratified” by the ruling. “Now our client is not convicted of anything.”

Nevertheless, Naughton’s lawyers still must overcome evidence that jurors in the first trial said they found very compelling, including the pictures themselves as well as testimony from expert witnesses identifying some of the children depicted in them.

Marks declined to say whether he will try to claim that the pictures are computer-generated, saying only that, “We plan on attacking those images in some way.”

In the next trial, jurors will probably get special instructions that they must conclude that the pictures found on Naughton’s computer are of actual children.

Naughton, who was an employee of Infoseek Corp. while it was in the process of being acquired by Disney, remains free on $100,000 bond.