When you think of child pornographers, the last image that comes to mind is a teenage girl. But as sexting becomes ever more popular with kids, prosecutors are increasingly seeking to charge minors with child pornography. In one of the more recent cases out of Wyoming, a teenage girl who appeared topless in a “sexting” cell phone picture that was shared electronically with her middle-school classmates should face child-pornography charges, a Pennsylvania prosecutor argued before a U.S. appellate court.

The Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office in the Portland, Oregon area recently sent out a memo regarding a resisting case (State v. Oliphant) and its decision’s effect on Oregon law enforcement. In essence, the ruling says: an arrestee may defend himself against a police officer’s use or  imminent use of force if the arrestee believes, as much as a reasonable person in his position would believe, that the officer’s use or imminent use of force exceeds the force reasonably necessary to make the arrest.

Firing a taser can result in liability for excessive force unless the officer faces an immediate threat to himself or the public.  This was the holding of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on December 28, 2009 in the case of Bryan v. McPherson, 2009 WL 5064477.

The result was not surprising, as Officer Brian McPherson of the Coronado Police.  Department fired his taser at a seat-belt violator who engaged in bizarre but non-threatening behavior.  In reaching that predictable outcome, the Court provided useful insight into the examination of factors bearing on excessive force claims that are gradually becoming more clearly defined as the judicial system encounters opportunities to apply the legal test to a series of ever-varying fact patterns.  The Court’s reasoning in the new case appears legally sound, but it is perhaps regrettable that the defendants brought an appeal under facts that gave the Court an easy opportunity to strike a blow against officer safety.

An inmate named Daniel Leonard was apparently angry because he did not have any toilet paper. He yelled threats to the deputies that he was going to "gas" them (you all know that means throwing feces and urine at deputies). It was decided because of the threat, to move Leonard to a different cell, so that if he tried to throw feces and urine, his "window of opportunity" would be minimized because of the location of the cell. Several deputies accompanied Mike Vernal to move Leonard to the other cell. The idea was simple: go in, restrain and cuff Leonard, and move him without incident to the other cell.

Well, Leonard was having none of that. He was aggressive and non-compliant, even after handcuffing, requiring Vernal to "pin" him against the wall and a glass window. This forcible maneuver caused Leonard's face and body to violently contact the wall and glass. This wasn't intended, but neither was it unexpected. Such injury mechanisms frequently are involved when a resistant inmate is forcibly "pinned" against a wall.

The question always comes down to this: unintended injury as a result of a reasonable use of force; or, gratuitous infliction of injury for the purpose of punishment or retaliation for some perceived insult?

In another positive decision from the perspective of law enforcement, The Supreme Court has ruled that evidence obtained from an unlawful arrest based on careless record keeping by the police may be used against a criminal defendant. The 5-to-4 decision was a close one, with the new conservative majority prevailing in their views on the exclusionary rule, which requires the suppression of some evidence obtained through police misconduct. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, wrote in the decision that the exclusion of evidence should be a last resort and that judges should use a "sliding scale" in deciding whether particular misconduct by the police warranted suppressing the evidence they had found.