State v. Dore

Syllabus

Convicted, after a trial to the court, of possession of child pornography in the second degree in violation of statute ((Rev. to 2015) § 53a-196e (a) (2)), the defendant appealed. The defendant had been charged after the police, pursuant to a search warrant, seized one of his home computers, which contained pornographic images of minor children that he had downloaded from the Internet. The defendant claimed, inter alia, that subdivision (2) of § 53a-196e (a) violated the first amendment to the United States constitu- tion because it was overbroad in that its breadth or scope was not limited to pornography involving real children. Held: There was no merit to the defendant's claim that subdivision (2) of § 53a-196e (a) was unconstitutionally overbroad because it does not include the term child pornography, as subdivision (2) must be read in conjunction with subdivision (1) of subsection (a), which expressly uses the term child pornography, the statutory ((Rev. to 2015) § 53a-193 (13)) definition of which limits the images proscribed under subdivision (2) to those of real children and excludes from its ambit virtual child pornography. This court rejected the defendant's claim that § 53a-196e (a) (2) was uncon- stitutionally vague on its face for the same reasons it rejected his claim that § 53a-196e (a) (2) was overbroad, and the defendant's contention that subsection (a) (2) was vague as applied to his conduct also lacked merit, as subsection (a) (2) provided sufficient notice that it proscribed the possession of child pornography and provided sufficient guidance as to what the state must prove to obtain a conviction, and the defendant's conduct clearly fell within the statute's unmistakable core meaning of prohibited conduct, namely, the possession of pornographic material depicting persons younger than sixteen years of age. The defendant could not prevail on his claim that the evidence was insuf- ficient to support his conviction insofar as it did not establish that