According to federal prosecutors, Sears attached photographic images of the faces of children to the body images of adults engaged in pornographic acts. He also put his face in some of the cut-and-paste images to make it seem he was having sex with children with bodies of adults.
According to the complaint filed against Sears, bags of pornographic images were discovered in the trash taken out of his apartment in January. It was found that Sears had created the images by photographing children in public places and then cutting and pasting the heads from the images to the bodies of adults. Hundreds of such images were found in the trash.
If convicted, Sears can face up to 10 years in prison.
In two recent decisions by federal appeals courts, the legal definition of child pornography had been defined to include digitally altered or modified images appearing to depict children engaged in sex acts.
In separate rulings, last year, the 2nd and 6th U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals had recognized an interest in protecting minors whose faces appeared in pornographic images, even though they were not engaged in such acts.
However, in similar cases of putting children’s faces onto pornographic images of adults, state appeals courts in both Florida and California had overturned child pornography convictions last year, as no minor were found 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