On February 1, 2018, new laws will go into effect regarding child pornography offenses. One law establishes the first degree crime for being the “leader of [a] child pornography network.” Separate laws establish additional penalties related to child pornography and expand the definition of the crime to include portrayal of a child in a sexual manner. The text of the new first degree offense reads:
2C:24-4.1. Leader of child pornography network; degree of crime; definitions. a. A person is a leader of a child pornography network if he knowingly conspires with others as an organizer, moderator, administrator, programmer, recruiter, or facilitator to engage in a scheme or course of conduct to establish or maintain an interconnected network through which files containing one or more items depicting the sexual exploitation or abuse of a child are in any way made available to or accessible among an organized group of users or participants.
- Leader of a child pornography network is a crime of the first degree if the offense involves 100,000 or more items depicting the sexual exploitation or abuse of a child; a crime of the second degree if the offense involves at least 1,000 but less than 100,000 items depicting the sexual exploitation or abuse of a child; and a crime of the third degree if the offense involves less than 1,000 items depicting the sexual exploitation or abuse of a child.
- For aggregation purposes, each item depicting the sexual exploitation or abuse of a child made available or accessible through a distribution network shall be considered a separate item, provided that each item that is in the form of a photograph, picture, image, or visual depiction of a similar nature shall be considered to be one item and each depiction that is in the form of a film, video, video-clip, movie, or visual depiction of a similar nature shall be considered to be 10 separate items.
It is strange to see a legal fiction like this “one video clip equals ten items” written into a statute. The text of this statute, like the other “leader” statutes before it addressing narcotics and firearms trafficking, is certain to generate issues for our appellate courts.