By Jessica Dye
NEW YORK, Jan 25 (Reuters) - A New York man who allegedly
attached photographs of children's faces to images of adults
engaged in sex acts was charged Friday with possessing child
pornography, federal prosecutors said.
Jay Lockett Sears, 73, was arraigned Friday before U.S.
Magistrate Judge Arlene Lindsay in Central Islip and is
scheduled to appear for a detention hearing on Monday.
The complaint said that bags containing "hundreds" of
pornographic images were discovered in trash taken out of
Sears's apartment in January. Prosecutors said Sears created the
images by taking photographs of children in public places and
then cutting and pasting their heads to the images of adults. In
some of the images, Sears attached his own face to the bodies of
men to make it appear he was having sex with the children,
prosecutors said.
He faces up to 10 years in prison, according to the U.S.
attorney's office for the Eastern District of New York.
A lawyer for Sears could not immediately be reached for
comment.
The case against Sears is rooted in two recent federal
appeals court decisions, the complaint said. Those decisions
confirmed that the legal definition of child pornography could
include digitally altered or modified images that appear to
depict children engaged in sex acts, which has been dubbed by
some the "morphing provision."
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the 6th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals concluded in separate rulings in 2011
that there was a recognizable interest in protecting the minors
whose faces appeared in the pornographic images, even though
they were not actually engaged in any sexual activity.
Not every court has agreed that modified or altered images
constitute child pornography. In 2011, state appeals courts in
Florida and California both overturned child pornography
convictions where the defendant was accused of putting
children's faces onto pornographic images of adults, because no
minor was participating in sexual conduct.
The case is U.S. v. Sears, U.S. District Court for the
Eastern District of New York, No. 13-053.
For the U.S.: Assistant U.S. attorneys Allen Bode and Thomas
Sullivan.
For Sears: Daniel Barker.
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