By PATRICIA DOXSEY
Freeman staff
pdoxsey@freemanonline.com; twitter.com/pattiatfreeman

NEW YORK’S highest court has overturned the conviction of Kingston resident and former Marist College professor James D. Kent on two child pornography charges, ruling that simply viewing child porn on the Internet is not enough to prove its procurement or possession.

The state Court of Appeals, in a ruling handed down on Wednesday, declined to overturn convictions on more than 100 other charges against Kent but ordered that he be resentenced in Dutchess County Court absent one felony count of promoting a sexual performance by a child and one felony count of possession of child pornography.

Kent’s attorney, Nathan Dershowitz, said he hopes the court will move quickly to resentence his client and that Kent will be sentenced to the time he already has served and be freed.

Kent, 63, was sentenced in August 2009 to one to three years in state prison and is scheduled to be released on Aug. 10.

Dutchess County Senior Assistant Dutchess County District Attorney Marjorie Smith said the Court of Appeals ruling is significant legally because it alters assumptions about cyber crimes related to child pornography.

Kent was found guilty following a non-jury trial in Dutchess County court of 134 counts of possession of child pornography and two counts of promoting a sexual performance by a child, all felonies, the result of thousands of pornographic images being found on his Marist College computer. The images were found after Kent asked the college’s technology staff to check his computer, which he said had been rebooting constantly.

Kent was a professor of public administration at Marist for 15 years before his arrest and conviction.

Smith said the college contacted police after the tech staff discovered Kent’s computer was getting “hung up” on pictures of semi-clad children in suggestive poses. She said the investigation led to the discovery of “the most vile, repulsive and horrific” images of child pornography.

The charges dismissed by the Court of Appeals, Smith said, relate to photos that were on Kent’s computer but that he hadn’t downloaded. The court ruled that to be convicted of possession, a person must take an active step, such as downloading the illegal material.

Smith said the ruling, in essence, means “going to a website alone does not constitute a violation of the existing statutes.” Continued...

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Since the ruling was issued, two state lawmakers from Brooklyn have introduced legislation that would make it illegal simply  to view child pornography.

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