A few people sent me emails asking how it was possible, but the email from the Ed. at Blawg Review put it best: ??? Three questions marks is very serious, with only an exclamation point missing to elevate it to the highest threat level.
Evan Emory pulled what could have been an incredibly funny prank or terribly deceitful conduct when he scammed some first grade teachers into letting him sing to a bunch of kids and record it. After changing the lyrics to make it appear he sang a dirty song, the nice folks in Ravena, Michigan were miffed. Really miffed.
Muskegon County District Attorney Tony Tague arrested Emory and charged him with the manufacture of kiddie porn. Bizarre and outrageous enough to make the New York Times, everybody screamed this was wrong. Then the other shoe fell.
The guy who didn’t sing explicit songs to elementary school kids gets two months in jail, probation, and must stay 500 feet away from minors when he gets out.
What sort of country are we living in that would impose such a harsh sentence for such a prank? Before we get too crazy, sputtering about the injustice of it all, consider this detail from the Muskegon News :
The original charge against him was ridiculous, a product of knee-jerk community outrage. Not unusual, particularly when children are involved, even if only peripherally. But the fact that a prosecutor panders to the sensibilities of his community doesn’t make Tony Tague particularly venal. Populism doesn’t only apply when the majority of the groundlings agree with you.Evan Daniel Emory sits in court before pleading no contest to a reduced felony count in Muskegon County 14th Circuit Judge William C. Marietti’s courtroom on March 14. Under the plea deal, Emory will serve 60 days in jail, two years of probation and 200 hours of community service. He will not have to register as a sex offender.
Faced with a potential 20 year sentence for the manufacture of child pornography, Emory was offered a deal. He took it. He took 20 years off the table. He took registration as a sex offender off the table. He made a decision to cut his losses.
There’s a great sense of frustration when someone whose case finds its way onto the radar and into the collective conscience of others. We take a strange ownership of it, as if have a say. Whether we’re outraged by the crime or by the charge, we expect our view of what it all means to matter. It doesn’t.
Behind the many stories on the internet are real people, in this case a 21 year old kid of the FunkyJunk generation, trying to have some fun, get his 15 minutes of fame and the envy of internet savvy 15 year olds everywhere. In the process, he stuck his finger into the lives of other people’s children, creating a wave of problems he never anticipated. By the time he realized the significance of his mistake, it was far too late.
Most of us, myself included, would have preferred to see Emory fight this case. We failed to see legitimacy in the nature of the charges and wanted someone to push back against Tony Tague’s excesses. Fight, fight, fight.
But then, if Emory has fought, as we hoped, and lost, he would spend a lot of years in a prison cell. We, on the other hand, would still be right stuff on the internet about the injustices around us. It’s easy to be tough guys when someone else serves the sentence.
The easy response is that Emory should never have lost, and maybe so in a perfect world. Unless you haven’t been paying attention, this is not a perfect world. Things go awry. All the time. Let’s assume one short view of the multitude of variations here, the the judge whispered to Emory’s lawyer, Terry Nolan, at the bench that he’s not dismissing the charges. Nolan, knowing the jury pool wants to hang Emory, fears the worst. Emory, being a kid, doesn’t have the stones or money to take it to trial and likely appeal, without its own set of variables, and decides discretion is the better part of valor. Sixty days (with whatever actually served), and he doesn’t have to remain awake at night worrying about whether he’ll lose his virginity to a hairy guy named Bruno.
This explanation, of course, is entirely speculative. I have no clue what went through Emory’s mind as he decided to take the plea. I have no idea what his attorney said or advised. I have no notion of the judge’s position on plea and sentence. Unlike so many others on the internet, I lack the capacity to read other people’s minds.
It’s frustrating to see cases end this way, as they leave onlookers terribly dissatisfied. We abhor what we perceive as over-reaching by the prosecution, mindless anger by the community and a kid’s life ruined by a stupid prank. It’s likely that my being troubled by Emory’s deception to weasel his way into a first grade classroom isn’t shared by many readers, who only see the bawdy video that never actually happened. This was the perspective at Mediaite :
While in court, Emory’s attorney, Terry Nolan, called the sentence “fitting.” Is it? It’s certainly more fitting than the original charge of child pornography which would have landed Emory in prison for up to 20 years and gotten his name on the sex offender registry. But, is any sentence kind of like sending Anthony Perkins to jail for killing Janet Leigh in the shower? Neither are something that actually happened.
What did happen was that Emory crafted a scheme to involve a bunch of children in his prank. To ignore this is to enjoy the myopia of punditry, that convenient thing that allows us to opine on only that portion of reality that supports our view. Neither Evan Emory nor Terry Nolan could afford to be so cavalier as to pretend that he did nothing wrong.
Rather than project my sensibilities on the outcome in response to Ed’s question, I can only offer this: Evan Emory decided to cop a plea. When you’re the guy staring at a prison sentence if you lose, you have to make a decision. Emory was entitled to make the decision that was right for him, even if the rest of us would have preferred that he fight the good fight. That’s how things work in the real world, and no world is more real than that of a defendant in a criminal prosecution.
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Great post, Scott. I was out of the loop for a few months and the internet was totally unavailable to me during this sabbatical–which was not such a bad thing. Nonetheless I caught the NYT account of this kid’s “prank.” Last year we were talking in another context how technology shapes, effects, and proliferate content, and crimes. This is particularly the case, in my opinion, when individuals who would never think to go into a seedy backroom and by child porn find themselves clicking a mouse to look at or download images that voila` turn them into felony sex offenders. Okay, we talked about this effect previously, but in my view this is another permutation of the same thread. YouTube and its clones exist on outrageous content. Could you imagine this “crime” absent the perceived need to feed (your ego, and) the YouTube technology. Factor in the value system that we seem to have adopted as reflected in all media–and, this “crime” is inevitable.
Odd, though, what our notions of free speech tolerate versus doesn’t tolerate–2 Girls, 1 Cup comes to mind.
BL
While I do not pretend to understand Emory’s decision, Here’s what I DO know: His attorney was convicted of MCL 333.74042A, a narcotic/cocaine/methamphetamine/ecstacy, 2nd offense. And he was suspended for it. A quick check of the MI Atty grievance commission will confirm this. His record leads me to think that perhaps Emory could have gotten a better deal out of the whole process by picking an attorney with a better reputation.
And frankly, the people of Michigan who prosecuted this should be ashamed of themselves and pull out their tattered copy of the 1st Amendment.
Welcome back, BL. Good to hear from you and hope all is well.
Having confirmed your assertion about Nolan, I’m allowing your comment to post even though I despise comments attacking someone when the commenter doesn’t have the balls to use his real name. Maybe Nolan’s past affected the deal. Maybe not. Maybe Emory would have done better with a lawyer who didn’t carry baggage, and why he chose Nolan isn’t clear.
So what? Again, Emory’s life, Emory’s choice. As for the 1st Amendment, it doesn’t protect someone from scamming their way into a first grade classroom to videotape children for their own reasons.
It’s weirder than that. Nolan was prosecuted by Tague’s office. But this is hardly a secret. It was a big deal in Muskegon County when Terry Nolan got his license back. It’s mentioned in the New York Times story you link to, which in turn links to a local story detailing the fall and rise of Terry Nolan. It’s worth reading (and on any other blog, I’d embed the link).
[Ed. note: This is the 30,000th comment on SJ. No prize.]
After reading Mark’s comment and following the NYT story which mentions the connections and Nolan’s past, I think I understand more about Emory’s decision to retain him. See, what I didn’t know is that Nolan had such a community connection and how important it was to his small community that he got his license back. All I knew of was his suspension record. (Thank you, Mark.)
And thank you, SHG, for allowing my original post. The followup comment helped put another puzzle pieces into place.
I’ve got as much info as I can about this case without seeing the actual video. And I agree that we can’t fault Emory for succumbing to the extortionist tactics of the prosecutor: “Take this deal, or we’ll end your life.”
That doesn’t mean I can’t, or shouldn’t, condemn the prosecutor for his overzealous pandering to the parents in this case. This is just disgusting.
Absolutely. Tague had a choice to not charge as well.