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A closely watched obscenity trial in Los Angeles federal court was suspended Wednesday after the judge acknowledged maintaining his own publicly accessible website featuring sexually explicit photos and videos.

Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. 9th 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."  [LA Times]

Kozinki admitted to the press that there was sexual content on his site.  His take on it however was that he found the images funny as opposed to arousing.  Some of the images included naked women painted like cows, and a man doing an aroused farm animal .  The judge also conceded that the postings were inappropriate.

The LA Judge also had another lamer excuse which could be true or completele false.  He claims that he thought the website was his private storage and that nobody else could access it.

After the news of the pictures present on his site got published, Kozinski  also tried to shift the blame to his adult college son at Yale.  "Yale called and said he's pretty sure he uploaded a bunch of it," Kozinski wrote in an e-mail to Abovethelaw.com, a legal news website. "I had no idea, but that sounds right because I sure don't remember putting some of that stuff there."

"If this is true, this is unacceptable behavior for a federal court judge," says  Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Well after everything, Judge Alex Kozinski is still unrepentant about the content being obscene.  He believes that its actually just funny and remains at the mercy of the Senate Judiciary committee.   "Is it prurient? I don't know what to tell you," he said. "I think it's odd and interesting. It's part of life." 

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