60 lines
2.5 KiB
Plaintext
60 lines
2.5 KiB
Plaintext
Colonel guilty of sending porn over computer
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Associated Press
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SAN ANGELO -- The former commander of Goodfellow Air Force Base was
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convicted in a court martial Monday of sending obscene material via
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his home computer.
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A jury of four men and one woman, all Air Force colonels, deliberated
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about two hours before returning guilty verdicts on all counts again
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Col. James Maxwell.
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He was convicted of transmitting obscene material via home computer,
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of transmitting child pornography through his computer and using
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indecent language with a junior Air Force officer.
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Maxwell, a 26-year Air Force veteran, now faces a possible 16-year
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prison sentence and loss of his military retirement benefits.
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Charges were filed against Maxwell after the FBI found his name among
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users of an on-line computer network who accessed computer-generated
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pornographic images of children.
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Maxwell also was said to have used the computer network to inquire
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about the location of homosexual meeting places.
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Maxwell's attorney had sought to have the charges dropped on grounds
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his transmissions on the computer from the privacy of his home were
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protected under the constitution.
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But the trial judge, Col. Donald Weir of Randolph Air Force Base,
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allowed the charges to stand last week, ruling that freedom of speech
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can be limited when it involves conduct unbecoming an officer.
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"That the writings were private between consenting adults, that they
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may have been welcome doesn't place them under the judicial umbrella
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of a constitutional protected condition," Weir had ruled.
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Weir dismissed a count alleging Maxwell had disgraced the Air Force by
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allegedly using electronic mail to ask about homosexual bars and child
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pornography.
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Maxwell, 48, was removed from command at the Goodfellow Air Force Base
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training center last summer after the charges were filed.
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+++++++++++++++++++++
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COMMENT: Looks to me like this thing is full of red flags. Isn't it
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coincidental that the story breaks just as there's a flap over gays in
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the military?!
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And where it says "the FBI found his name among users of an on-line
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computer network who accessed computer-generated pornographic images
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of children", one might ask what network? what was the FBI doing
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there? how did the images get there? how did the FBI think to track
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them? who else is getting snared? civilians? were the images really
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"computer-generated" or just scanned?
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It's enough to restore one's healthy paranoia...
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