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A closely watched obscenity trial in federal court here was suspended on Wednesday after the judge acknowledged maintaining his own publicly accessible website featuring sexually explicit photos.
Alex Kozinski — chief judge of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals — granted a 48-hour stay in the obscenity trial of a Hollywood adult filmmaker after the prosecutor requested time to explore “a potential conflict of interest concerning the court having a... sexually explicit website with similar material to what is on trial here”.
Kozinski acknowledged posting sexual content on his website. Among the images on the site were a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows and a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal. He defended some of the adult content as “funny” but conceded that other postings were inappropriate.
Kozinski, 57, said that he thought the site was for his private storage and that he was not aware the images could be seen by the public. He also said he had shared some material on the site with friends. He then blocked public access to the site.
Kozinski is one of the nation’s highest-ranking judges and has been mentioned as a possible candidate for the US Supreme Court. He was named chief judge of the 9th Circuit last year and is considered a judicial conservative on most issues. He was appointed to the federal bench by President Reagan in 1985.
After publication of an latimes.com article about his website on Wednesday, the judge offered another explanation for how the material might have been posted to the site. As controversy about the website spread, Kozinski was seeking to shift responsibility, at least in part, to his adult son, Yale.
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