Friday, December 24, 1999
Mapplethorpe photo overturns sex conviction
BY JANE PRENDERGAST
The Cincinnati Enquirer
FRANKFORT — A Mapplethorpe photograph helped win a convicted sex offender a new trial.
The Kentucky Court of Appeals said Thursday that the photo was irrelevant and should never have been admitted as prosecution evidence in the trial of Douglas Love. He was convicted of sexual abuse after a summer 1998 trial in Boone County.
The photo, showing a young girl wearing a dress but no underwear, was found in Mr. Love's apartment. The prosecutor used it to try to help prove that Mr. Love was sexually attracted to young girls and therefore was likely to have molested the girl in the case, a co-worker's 10-year-old daughter.
Over defense objections, Boone Circuit Judge Jay Bamberger allowed the evidence to be admitted, saying it showed motive or inclination. “I can't imagine,” the judge said in part, “that somebody thinks that this doesn't tend to make the crime more likely than less likely, keeping a photo like that in one's bathroom.”
The appeals court disagreed. The justices said the picture wasn't relevant be cause no one linked it to this specific case.
The justices cited a previous case, Dyer vs. Commonwealth, in which a man's conviction was reversed because Hustler magazine pictures were introduced at his trial. As in the Love case, prosecutors never established that the magazines had anything to do with the alleged abuse.
In that case, Supreme Court justices declared “unqualifiedly, that citizens and residents of Kentucky are not subject to criminal conviction based upon the contents of their bookcase...”
Mr. Love was sentenced to four years in prison. He has been out while the appeal was pending.
“I can't wait” to tell him, Mr. Love's lawyer, Marcus Carey, said Thursday. “Guess what? Merry Christmas — we won.”
Robert Mapplethorpe was a photographer of international stature whose works included portraits, flowers and sexual images of gay men.
His photos caused a stir in 1990 when downtown Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center presented an exhibit of the late artist's work. The museum and its director fought obscenity charges and won.
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