Dragon Con co-founder fights charge based on artist's photo

With the filing of yet another criminal charge against a co-founder of Dragon Con — this time a child pornography charge stemming from a published art work — his attorney has renewed his call for a prosecutor to be barred from any matter involving his client.

Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter last week secured an indictment against Ed Kramer on a charge of sexual exploitation of children. The indictment says Kramer possessed a digital image showing a minor "engaged in sexually explicit conduct," specifically a naked prepubescent boy "with an unknown substance dripping down from the pubic area of said minor, said image containing the caption 'Popsicle Drips, 1985.'"

That image is a photograph by artist Sally Mann that depicts her son and was published in her book "Immediate Family" in 1992, Kramer's attorney Stephen Reba wrote in a court filing. It clearly does not involve a sexual act and cannot be legally interpreted as child pornography, Reba wrote.

This legal back-and-forth is only the latest skirmish in an ongoing legal saga that has entangled Kramer and Porter for nearly two decades.

Kramer co-founded Dragon Con in 1987, and now the sci-fi, fantasy and gaming convention draws tens of thousands of visitors to Atlanta over Labor Day weekend every year. He hasn't been involved in the event since he was arrested in August 2000 on charges of molesting teenage brothers.

In that case, Kramer ultimately entered a plea in December 2013 that carried the consequences of a guilty verdict, including registering as a sex offender, but allowed him to maintain his innocence.

More recently, Kramer was indicted Sept. 18 along with a Gwinnett County Superior Court judge and two others. They were each charged with three counts of criminal trespass in an indictment accusing them of illegally accessing the Gwinnett County Justice Center computer network in February.

That indictment was light on details, but Reba wrote in a court filing earlier this year in another case that the judge reportedly believed Porter had hacked her computer and hired a private investigator to monitor the suspected activity. Kramer was engaged as a forensic analyst to monitor and analyze the collected data.

Kramer reportedly found evidence that someone had accessed the judge's computers and was working on a more detailed analysis when he was arrested in late February and accused of photographing a minor while at a medical appointment without parental consent, which is illegal for sex offenders.

While jailed on that charge, Kramer filed a grievance in March saying he was assaulted by a jail officer. Authorities charged him with making a false statement, a felony.

The February and March charges remain pending, and Reba calls them absurd.

Kramer appeared in court Sept. 30 for a bond hearing in the computer trespass case. Just before the hearing, Porter said his office was working on a new child pornography case against Kramer that was several weeks from being ready to obtain a warrant, Reba wrote.

Even though Porter had recused himself from the computer trespass case because he's a potential witness, the district attorney sat in the front row at the bond hearing, helped the special prosecutor handling the case and provided information in an attempt to keep the judge from granting bond, Reba wrote.

When it seemed like the judge might grant bond, Porter said he was going to seek a warrant in the child pornography case right away "taking the decision out of the Court's hands," Reba wrote.

Reba filed a motion to dismiss the warrant for lack of probable cause, saying Kramer "is being charged with possessing a piece of art."

The Mann photo has been possessed and displayed by museums, universities, libraries and bookstores, Reba wrote. If there is probable cause to arrest and charge Kramer, there must also be probable cause to arrest and charge those entities, Reba reasoned.

Porter got the indictment on Oct. 9, a few hours before a probable cause hearing in the case was scheduled to be held. That removed the case from magistrate court and deprived Kramer of his chance to challenge the warrant and ask for a bond that day, Reba wrote.

Reba filed a motion Oct. 10 asking a judge to remove Porter and his office from the prosecution of all matters involving Kramer.

Reba accuses Porter of abuses of power and prosecutorial misconduct, saying he refused to remove himself from a case he's already recused from and misused the grand jury system to keep Kramer from being granted bond.

Porter said in an email Wednesday that he plans to file a response with the court by the end of the week. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Porter denied abusing his power and defended the latest indictment, saying that to qualify as child pornography a photograph "has to be of a naked child, a lewd display of a naked child."

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Ukrainian court on Friday ordered the detention of the country’s farm minister in the latest high-profile corruption investigation, while Kyiv security officials assessed how they can recover lost battlefield momentum in the war against Russia.

Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court ruled that Agriculture Minister Oleksandr Solskyi should be held in custody for 60 days, but he was released after paying bail of 75 million hryvnias ($1.77 million), a statement said.

Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau suspects Solskyi headed an organized crime group that between 2017 and 2021 unlawfully obtained land worth 291 million hryvnias ($6.85 million) and attempted to obtain other land worth 190 million hryvnias ($4.47 million).

Ukraine is trying to root out corruption that has long dogged the country. A dragnet over the past two years has seen Ukraine’s defense minister, top prosecutor, intelligence chief and other senior officials lose their jobs.

That has caused embarrassment and unease as Ukraine receives tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid to help fight Russia’s army, and the European Union and NATO have demanded widespread anti-graft measures before Kyiv can realize its ambition of joining the blocs.

In Ukraine's capital, doctors and ambulance crews evacuated patients from a children’s hospital on Friday after a video circulated online saying Russia planned to attack it.

Parents hefting bags of clothes, toys and food carried toddlers and led young children from the Kyiv City Children’s Hospital No. 1 on the outskirts of the city. Medics helped them into a fleet of waiting ambulances to be transported to other facilities.

In the video, a security official from Russian ally Belarus alleged that military personnel were based in the hospital. Kyiv city authorities said that the claim was “a lie and provocation.”

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that civic authorities were awaiting an assessment from security services before deciding when it was safe to reopen the hospital.

“We cannot risk the lives of our children,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was due to hold online talks Friday with the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which has been the key international organization coordinating the delivery of weapons and other aid to Ukraine.

Zelenskyy said late Thursday that the meeting would discuss how to turn around Ukraine’s fortunes on the battlefield. The Kremlin’s forces have gained an edge over Kyiv’s army in recent months as Ukraine grappled with a shortage of ammunition and troops.

Russia, despite sustaining high losses, has been taking control of small settlements as part of its effort to drive deeper into eastern Ukraine after capturing the city of Avdiivka in February, the U.K. defense ministry said Friday.

It’s been slow going for the Kremlin’s troops in eastern Ukraine and is likely to stay that way, according to the Institute for the Study of War. However, the key hilltop town of Chasiv Yar is vulnerable to the Russian onslaught, which is using glide bombs — powerful Soviet-era weapons that were originally unguided but have been retrofitted with a navigational targeting system — that obliterate targets.

“Russian forces do pose a credible threat of seizing Chasiv Yar, although they may not be able to do so rapidly,” the Washington-based think tank said late Thursday.

It added that Russian commanders are likely seeking to advance as much as possible before the arrival in the coming weeks and months of new U.S. military aid, which was held up for six months by political differences in Congress.

While that U.S. help wasn’t forthcoming, Ukraine’s European partners didn’t pick up the slack, according to German’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which tracks Ukraine support.

“The European aid in recent months is nowhere near enough to fill the gap left by the lack of U.S. assistance, particularly in the area of ammunition and artillery shells,” it said in a report Thursday.

Ukraine is making a broad effort to take back the initiative in the war after more than two years of fighting. It plans to manufacture more of its own weapons in the future, and is clamping down on young people avoiding conscription, though it will take time to process and train any new recruits.

Jill Lawless contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Ukrainian young acting student Gleb Batonskiy plays piano in a public park in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)