Naughton: Child porn 'unsolicited'
Published: 30 Nov 1999 16:26 GMT
The trial of Patrick Naughton was delayed until Dec. 7 during a routine pretrial hearing in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles Monday. The former Infoseek executive was scheduled Tuesday to face charges that he allegedly crossed state lines to engage in sexual activity with a minor.
In other developments during Monday's proceedings, Naughton briefly took the stand to answer prosecution questions about his high-tech work experience, and defence attorney Bruce Margolin revealed that the Walt Disney-affiliated Infoseek fired Naughton immediately after his arrest. Judge Edward Rafeedie will rule Tuesday on a defence motion to suppress Naughton's written confession and evidence seized from his car immediately after his arrest.
Naughton, who lives in Seattle, was arrested at Los Angeles' Santa Monica pier after allegedly arranging to meet an FBI agent posing as a 13-year-old he met in a chat room. Margolin said FBI agents destroyed Naughton's "psychological balance" when they failed to tell him that the woman he arranged to meet was really a decoy.
FBI decoy Amber Braaten who had been posing as the 13-year-old even staged an impromptu crying fit, while another agent pretended to be her mother, as Naughton was led into a local police precinct to be questioned.
Naughton did take the stand briefly Monday at the request of the prosecution. Dressed in a black suit with his brown wavy hair gelled back, he answered a series of questions about his educational background and work experience.
Naughton proudly testified that he led Java development and served as the chief technical officer of both Starwave and Disney's Buena Vista Internet Services. After that, prosecutor Patricia Donahue abruptly ended the questioning, but later said it was unlikely that anyone with Naughton's intelligence and education would be duped by Braaten's crying.
During the morning's proceedings, Margolin hinted at some of the tactics he will use to defend Naughton -- calling chat rooms a "virtual world of fantasy" where people role play, and where his client didn't really believe he was talking to a 13-year-old girl. He also said people, including Naughton, sometimes are e-mailed pornographic images of both children and adults without asking for them.
"Our position, your honour, is that's how those images came on -- unsolicited," he told the judge.
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