Bernie Ward to change plea

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Bernie Ward to change plea

Postby radiofan » Wed May 07, 2008 11:46 am

SAN FRANCISCO
Bernie Ward to change not-guilty plea
Radio personality faces trial in month on child porn counts
Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, May 7, 2008


(05-06) 21:21 PDT San Francisco -- Former radio talk show host Bernie Ward, who pleaded not guilty in December to distributing and receiving child pornography via the Internet, plans to change his plea Thursday, federal court records show.

Ward, 57, is scheduled to appear before U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco to change his plea. He is a month away from going on trial.

Ward's attorney, Doron Weinberg, was unavailable for comment Tuesday night.

The case against Ward began when he engaged in sex chats with an online dominatrix and allegedly sent her pictures of children engaged in sexual activity, according to a police report.

The woman, who lives in Oakdale (Stanislaus County), became concerned after Ward allegedly sent her pictures in December 2004 showing children "engaged in or simulating sexual acts with adults or other children," Oakdale police Officer Benjamin Savage wrote in a report.

Ward sent her a photo of a naked boy sitting on a chair between a topless woman and a clothed girl, the police report said.

A federal grand jury indicted Ward, a former Catholic priest, in September on two counts distributing child pornography and one count of receiving child porn using the Internet.

After the indictment was unsealed in December, KGO-AM fired him from his job as a talk show host.

Ward pleaded not guilty to the charges in December and had insisted that he was innocent of any wrongdoing. Weinberg has said the conversations Ward had with the woman consisted only of role-playing as part of a book he was researching on hypocrisy.

Last month, Ward sought a ruling from the judge that would allow him to present a defense that he received and distributed "the charged contraband" for legitimate First Amendment purposes, namely to research and comment upon "social mores."

Federal prosecutors opposed any such ruling, saying in court papers that allowing such First Amendment defenses "would invite every defendant charged with child pornography crimes to suddenly become a legitimate researcher educating the masses via their Web log."

E-mail Henry K. Lee at hlee@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page B - 9 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Last edited by radiofan on Wed May 07, 2008 8:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who couldn't hear the music.
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Postby Jack Bennest » Wed May 07, 2008 5:06 pm

Darn Wrad

hope he spells better than radiofan who always claims he mistypes

lol
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Postby jon » Wed May 07, 2008 8:24 pm

A thorough investigation by RadioWest's forensic computing squad has revealed that Radiofan's typing challenges can be directly attributed to the Commodore 64 keyboard that he was using until just recently.

In an exclusive interview, Radiofan has revealed that his new Vista machine came with a keyboard that actually transmits a character every time you hit a key.

The evidence is not conclusive, however. A minority report indicates that his typing speed may have been too much for his poor HP's Pentium processor to keep up with. The new Vista machine is dual-core, backed by 1GB of memory, soon to be expanded to 2GB, with memory salvaged from its twin, which currently resides in Edmonton, behind this keyboard.
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