Eric Gray was convicted of child porn for sending a picture of his penis to a 22-year-old woman in 2012, when he was 17 year sold. He appealed the decision but the Washington state Supreme Court upheld the decision on Thursday
Washington state’s highest court has upheld the conviction of a 17-year-old boy who was found guilty of child pornography for sending a picture of his penis to a 22-year-old woman.
In a 6-3 decision handed down Thursday, the Washington state Supreme Court said that Eric Daniel Gray, of Spokane, who is now 22, was indeed guilty of second-degree child pornography, even though he was the subject of the illicit photos.
Gray was convicted on the charge in August 2012 after sending a woman who used to work for his mother a picture of his erect penis.
The woman, who was 22 at the time, said that for about a year she had been receiving phone calls late at night from someone who kept asking sexual questions.
Then she received two text messages: one showing a picture of an erect penis and another asking ‘Do you like it babe? It’s for you [redacted]. And for Your daughter babe.’
The victim suspected that it was Gray texting her, so she reported the messages to police, who were able to trace them back to the 17-year-old and he eventually copped to sending them.
He was initially charged with second-degree dealing in depictions of a minor engaged in sexually-explicit conduct, harassment and indecent exposure. But the other two charges were later dropped.
While adults charged with child pornography can face up to 10 years in prison in Washington state, Gray was sentenced in juvenile court so he was only sentenced to 30 days of confinement and 150 hours of community service.
His lawyers appealed the decision on the basis that the state’s child porn laws were ambiguous, and couldn’t possibly mean to punish a victim of child porn for distributing it.
Gray’s legal team appealed the decision, saying it should be impossible for him to be both the perpetrator and victim of child pornography. Washington state’s highest court did not agree. Above, the Temple of Justice in Olympia, Washington
The case has drew some national attention for it’s potential ramifications for minors who sext each other. Would they also be guilty of child pornography?
But the Washington state Supreme Court said minors sexting each other was not the issue at stake in Gray’s case, and their decision should not be applied to such cases.
In this specific case, he was clearly in violation of the state’s child porn law, the majority wrote.
‘We also understand the worry caused by a well-meaning law failing to adapt to changing technology. But our duty is to interpret the law as written and, if unambiguous, apply its plain meaning to the facts before us. Gray’s actions fall within the statute’s plain meaning.
‘Because he was not a minor sending sexually explicit images to another consenting minor, we decline to analyze such a situation. The statute here is unambiguous. A ‘person’ is any person, including a minor. Images of a ‘minor’ are images of any minor. Nothing in the statute indicates that the ‘person’ and the ‘minor’ are necessarily different entities,’ the majority wrote.
Three justices were part of the dissenting opinion, which was written by Justice Sheryl Gordon McCloud.
In her dissent, McCloud said punishing a minor for child porn could not be what the law intends, which was designed to protect children.
The majority’s opinion ‘means that a 12-year-old girl who is groomed or lured into taking and then texting explicit depictions of herself to an adult can be prosecuted for succumbing to that grooming,’ McCloud wrote.
McCloud noted in her dissent that Gray was already a registered sex offender from a previous case and has Asperger’s. Instead of sending him to prison, the justice system should seek to get him help through medical or therapeutic treatment,
‘In short, the majority’s interpretation punishes the most vulnerable participant – the depicted child – no matter what personal pressures or personal demons (Gray suffers from Asperger’s syndrome) compelled the child to do it,’ she wrote.