Anime Vice Anime/Manga News

Word at the New Glasgow News of Nova Scotia, Canada, is that a pair of twin brothers-- David Scott and James Corey Hammond, both 20 --have been given three months in jail and 18 monhs of probation for possession of child pornography, including "Japanese anime images," featuring young boys.

The report offers that "approximately 90 per cent of the images were of cartoon drawings called Japanese Anime, while the remainder were of actual children." (Just once, I'd like to see one of these reporters actually reach out to an anime/manga expert, so that they could at least get the terminology right.) Apparently the computer forensics also found that at least one of the boys was trying to figure out whether the material was legal or not.

The article claims that it's legal in the United States, somewhat erroneously-- the 2003 PROTECT Act, better known as the "Amber Alert law," also includes legislation against drawn depictions of minors engaged in any kind of sexual intercourse; the law has not been tested in courts and previously the Supreme Court found in favor of the legality of such drawn depictions, so it's unclear whether the law would stay on the books if the Court got to try it.

But back to the point at hand: since it was unclear which twin did most of the downloading, and both admitted to having done some, they received the same punishment, although one brother may have "a low risk to re-offend" based on reports, while the other "admitted that he was attracted to 12-year-old boys" and had thought of approaching them.

Now, it seems to me that compared to Christopher Handley-- the Iowa native who plead guilty to a PROTECT Act charge in May, who is facing up to 15 years in prison --their sentence seems fairly light. And Handley, as far as I'm aware, had ONLY manga-type drawings, as opposed to these two, who had a small number of real-life kiddy porn images as well.

Speaking of Handley, I did some research on the PACER court database, and while he was originally supposed to be sentenced in August, as I recall, but instead it looks like in September the prosecutor is still working on the pre-sentencing report, which was drafted, objected to, and then not objected to. The most recent document in the case is from September 17th, which was just a declaration that they published the Order of Forfeiture of additional property of Handley's-- which means there's been nothing filed in the case in a month. 
 
I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know exactly what that means in terms of when Handley will be sentenced. It seems odd to me that they'd wait so long, though-- I've e-mailed Handley's attorneys of record, so I'll let you know if/when I hear back from them.