Nick was leaving food out for their roaming cats and that is what likely attracted them in the first place.
Yes that's why I italicized "don't be a twit and leave treats out for raccoons"
It's disgusting he basically lured them in, saw the problem, refused to correct himself, then brutally killed things just doing the predictable animal. Every single thing he did was unnecessary, negligent, and stupid.
Do I spy a life pattern? Hmm.
I don’t disagree that they did well for us, but the fact is, there was never an order to prevent April’s testimony, nor was it deemed that her rights were violated.
The judge went out of his way not to make a ruling on it and the prosecutor claimed April’s comments were hearsay and that was why they weren’t using it. I feel like the kiwi reporters shouldn’t have missed such a major part of the hearing, which lead to pages and pages of speculation as a result.
I’m grateful for their service and I agree that people always should be in person, but at the same time I think they dropped the ball there.
Jesus Christ. 1. They owed no one anything. 2. They acquitted themselves well. 3. They were not or were not there in capacities as lawyers. 4. They provided milk, and, even better, a nice little vignette and human side-story. 5. The transcript was out fast enough. 6. Speculation is half the fun.
it can be done with adults who are very into being The Smartest Guy in the Room- tell them about 80% of a course of treatment with one glaringly obvious bit missing. Being so so so smart, they usually jump at the chance to fill in the missing 20%, and then you can be like "wow! I never thought of it that way!" and they've invented therapy! It was all their idea. I
Can confirm.
As the statute you cite states, no such "presumption" exists for either of those two elements. Instead, it is a necessary element which must be proven that Aaron knew or should have known that there was an expectation of privacy. Same for the other element.
Yes, you're correct that the state has to show that the defendant knows/should knows that the person depicted did not consent to the dissemination. But in the absence of actual knowledge of non-consent, you're in a contextual analysis. And if the state asserts that it is reasonable that any dropped lover would know that his ex does not consent to her nudes being sent around, points to the fact that the pic was either sent just to Aaron or shared only in a very small, tight group of intertwined lovers, then Aaron would need to pull up something to rebut the assertion and show that it was, in fact, unreasonable for him to think Kayla wouldn't be OK with him sending her full frontal to Geno in NY, who, at the time, was Team Aaron. Absent any evidence one way or another (and Kayla could of course testify that she would never ever have consented to that, so good luck defeating that without some explicit indication of "sure send it to Geno"), you're at a jury assessment of whether the reasonable starting point for Aaron was consent or non-consent. And even in outstate Minnesota, implicit consent to sending or publishing private pics is going to be a hard sell.
Was I out over my skis on that assertion of a "presumption" (in the legal sense) of nonconsent? Yes and no. Let's see:
The law on criminal nonconsensual dissemination of pornography is quite undeveloped in general - MN in 2020 was still deciding Constitutional questions around its statute (see
State of Minnesota v Casillas, decided by the MN Supreme Court at the end of 2020, holding that 617.261, which was earlier struck down by the Minnesota Court of Appeals, survived the strict scrutiny standard and is a Constitutional restriction on speech) and MN's non-felony provision itself is on the vanguard of US legislation by not even requiring specific intent to cause x outcome. I could refer to analogous arguments about default privacy presumptions, but that's the stuff of advocates and positional law review articles.
However, I refer you to footnote 9 of the
Casillas decision by the MN Supreme Court:
In our view, it is not difficult to obtain consent before disseminating a private sexual image. Simply ask permission. We cannot imagine an emergency situation that requires the immediate dissemination of a private sexual image.
The footnote follows the only statement made as to consent in the opinion, which was to acknowledge exceptions for commercial works ("This provision provides additional protection for commercial advertisements, certain adult films, artistic works, and other creative expression outside the statute’s scope.")
In the absence of significant caselaw to the contrary*, I'm going to say that the main (and maybe only?) indicator from the MN Supreme Court is that interpreting "reasonably should know that the person depicted in the image does not consent to the dissemination" is going to be a very low bar to clear, with the (informal, norm) starting point being nonconsent.
* I concede that on remand the MN Court of Appeals
stated,
Casillas argues that
Minn. Stat. § 617.261 is vague because there could be circumstances in which defendants would not have knowledge of facts that make their conduct illegal. For example, Casillas proffers a hypothetical in which a person "texts a nude or semi-nude photo of him or herself to a partner and [the] partner shows the photo to a third party" to brag, and "not to get revenge or humiliate." Casillas queries whether under those circumstances, the partner should "'reasonably have known' that the sender did not consent to the 'dissemination'" or "that the sender had a reasonable expectation of privacy."
Casillas's hypothetical does not establish that
Minn. Stat. § 617.261 is unconstitutionally void. It merely demonstrates that there may be close cases in which the state must rely on circumstantial evidence to prove a charge of unlawful dissemination of private sexual images under
Minn. Stat. § 617.261.
See Williams,
553 U.S. at 305-06,
128 S. Ct. at 1846 (observing that hypotheticals advanced as examples of vagueness were really examples of close cases resolved by the requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt and not by the vagueness doctrine).
But with the MN Supreme Court's comment in mind, in the absence of something very clear like "I don't mind if you share this to anyone now or if we ever break up," if reasonableness bears any relationship to sanity, I can't think of a scenario where it is unreasonable that an ex would know that the ex did not consent to having their nudes shared with others beyond the single or small group in which it was shared. Consent is an affirmative action.
The reality is that Aaron didn't pause to think whether Kayla consented or not, but he should have.