Not the person, but the issue.  The  WSJ Law Blog headlines it thus:

Accused Sex Offender Allowed To View Child Porn While In Jail

Catchy, right? It grabs you by the collar and shakes you with fury.  But it sets the discussion off in a deliberately misguided direction, though the balance of the post provides a fair and accurate description of a exceptionally rare circumstance.

In this case, the alleged offender, Weldon Marc Gilbert, has chosen to act as his own defense lawyer, a choice that he claims entitles him to unlimited access to all of the evidence related to the case, according to the AP.

The local Pierce County Superior Court recently ruled in Gilbert’s favor, prosecutor Mark Lindquist told the Law Blog.

Sometimes, things work out this way.  Had the headline read, “Defendant Representing Self Allowed to See Evidence Against Him,” it wouldn’t have been as snappy and likely wouldn’t have made the papers at all.

“The whole thing is just dirty,” said Pierce County Sheriff’s Detective Ed Troyer on Wednesday. “Now that victims know he’s going to be watching this, they’re going to feel victimized again. This is our call to action to get the law changed.”

When you frame the issue as one of handing child pornography over to some pervert (putting aside, as normal people do, that guilt has yet to be established), it certainly does seem dirty.  Not that the victim is really victimized again, but that there’s a bone in our head that says anyone who would do such a thing would be better drawn and quartered than allowed to watch it.

The judge in this case seems to have taken appropriate precautions to limit the defendant’s potential “enjoyment” of the evidence, should that be the case.

The judge barred him from being alone when he reviews the videos and other evidence, set out on more than 100 compact discs.

He reviews them in a room visible to corrections officers with a defense investigator present, Troyer said. The jail requires him to turn his computer screen away from any doors or windows so other inmates don’t see.

Not perfect, but properly suited to allow the pro se defendant to see the evidence without much more.  However, the argument is that this is not only disgusting, but unnecessary despite the court holding otherwise.

Criminal defendants generally have a constitutional right to see the evidence against them so they can prepare for trial. That’s always been a sensitive issue in child pornography cases, where many people are troubled by the notion that perverts might be allowed to continue viewing the illicit material that got them in trouble in the first place.

“We have to disclose when we intend to introduce cocaine in a drug case, but we don’t give the defendant a kilo to take home and check out,” Pierce County Prosecutor Mark Lindquist said. “It is not necessary for the defendant to view the child porn himself to assist in his defense.”

Of course, Lindquist’s argument mixes apples with Fords and, in fact, is wrong.  The defense can, indeed, “check out” the kilo by moving to have it tested by its own expert for content and weight, and, I suppose, the defendant can be present when it’s done.

But the bottom line is that the nature of the evidence dictates the nature of disclosure.  If a person is charged with having porn, then the defense is entitled to be in a position to challenge it, and to prepare for the challenge, is entitled to see it.  Nothing new here.

The call for a law to close this “loop hole” is to frame it as a loop hole, a problem that demands a solution.  It’s not.  The defendant, nasty as the charges may be, must first be tried and convicted before he can be the terrible sex offender.  The defendant must be afforded due process before he can be tried and convicted.  These are the basics, and demand no further explanation.

Sure, the scenario has every potential to make a normal person wretch, and it’s not that we want men who sexually harm children to be able to enjoy watching kiddie porn while awaiting trial, but this inflammatory outlier scenario does nothing more than confuse the issue and the problem.  We have an amazing ability to come up with peculiar situations which just seem wrong, sometimes dirty, but fall squarely within the norm. 

We don’t like the way these outliers pan out, but they happen.  And keep happening. We can’t make every dirty, nasty bizarre situation disappear.  Not even a thousand new laws named after children will cure every potential ugly scenario.  We need to remain focused on the big picture, the reason why the system was created as it was, and intended to work as it should. Due process isn’t a bad thing, even though it may have the occasional ugly side effect. 

By framing the ugly side of the problem, the issue becomes badly confused and contorted.  Aside from the fact that no person is guilty until convicted, even the guilty are entitled to defend.  Many can’t wrap their heads around the idea, that everyone is entitled to a defense, but that’s the heart of the system.  No doubt the prosecutor, and likely even the sheriff, get the issue. 

Let’s not contribute to greater anger and misunderstanding by framing it in such a way as to exploit this unfortunate and bizarre situation at the expense of what is clearly sound and necessary legal process.  And for crying out loud, the last thing we need is another law.