A federal appeals court is reversing a lifetime internet ban imposed on a child sex offender also handed a 15-year prison term.
The outcome highlights the appellate courts are all over the map when it comes to internet bans often imposed on defendants, especially sex deviants, once they have served their time. What's more, the courts appear to be accepting the internet as a basic freedom to which convicts, even the worst of the worst, usually should not be denied permanent access.
The latest decision concerning internet bans comes as the Motion Picture Association of America and others are lobbying Congress to "encourage" internet service providers to bar internet access to repeat, copyright scofflaws under what is generally known as a "three-strikes" policy. How such a policy would play out in practice, and how the U.S. courts would view it, is unknown.
Regardless, in the criminal case decided Monday, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia recognized the "Draconian nature of internet bans" (.pdf) in terms of employment opportunities as well as limits on "freedoms of speech and association."
Defendant Arthur Heckman, now 49, pleaded guilty in 2008 to e-mailing pictures to an FBI undercover agent of minors engaged in sex acts.
To be sure, judges have broad discretion in fashioning special conditions of supervised release. However, those conditions must be necessary to deter future crime, protect the public and rehabilitate the defendant -- provisions weighed on a case-by-case basis.
In Heckman's case, the appeals court noted that it had rejected a lifetime internet ban in 2007 for a pervert who displayed the naked buttocks of his 3-year-old daughter on a webcam. But last year, the same circuit court upheld a 20-year prison term and a 10-year internet ban on a man who distributed child pornography and lured "the direct exploitation of minors."
"This is the lengthiest ban we have upheld," the appeals court wrote.
Celebrated hacker Kevin Mitnick was barred from the internet for three years following his 2000 release from prison.
In August, the first unconditional lifetime internet ban on appeal (.pdf) was upheld by the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The defendant was also sentenced to six years for "traveling in interstate commerce with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a person under the age of 18."
Painting: Lady Justice, by Luca Giordano
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