Post by Eli the BeardedPost by BaalI recently learned that Frank McCoy died on April 2nd, 2020. I learned
this through the prisoner locator website maintained by the Bureau of
Prisons (BOP).
Thanks for the update. I note the old birthday list said he was born in
November 1943, not 1944.
Thanks for the correction -- I was unaware of the birthday list.
Post by Eli the BeardedHis stories were not to my tastes,
Nor mine -- I think I read a few paragraphs of one of them, and that was
enough.
Post by Eli the Beardedbut that doesn't mean I wanted him to die in jail.
Me, neither. Where I live, simple possession of any of Frank's materials --
even though they are just text -- constitute a criminal offence, and grounds
for a minimum 2-year jail sentence.
It has long been my view that the state has NO business whatsoever telling
authors what they can write, nor citizens what they can read or view, for
that matter. We have long since lost that battle in this country, and so it
would appear, in yours as well, at least insofar as certain types of erotica
are concerned.
Post by Eli the BeardedI'm going to include three things to help people know who he was.
Subject: {ASSM} {FAQ} Ole Joe's Guide - UPDATE - v.2003 [1/2]
Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 16:10:02 -0500
------ cut 8<------
FRANK MCCOY has a website for his stories and reposts them to the group
occasionally. All his stories are incestuously related, generally adult
male/teen-or-pre-teen female. Often includes impregnation. If that turns
you on, you gotta have them.
[list snipped]
I noticed that you did not include any links to where these materials might
potentially be obtained -- in light of what happened to Frank, this was a
prudent move.
Post by Eli the BeardedSecond, an old back and forth from this group.
------ cut 8<------
Subject: {ASSD} More hopper-fodder ....
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 13:20:06 GMT
Post by BaalI was just getting breakfast in the kitchen where
the wife had left a bottle of spaghetti-sauce out
for dinner ... likely tomorrow or the next day.
I was eating cereal when I noticed the label,
"Prego(tm)" and almost spewed milk and raisin-bran
all over the counter when I thought, "What if it
was true?"
Back in the mists of history, sometime in the late
1970s or early 1980s, the TV ads for Prego had a
woman being asked about the "usual" goodies-- spices
and the like-- being in the sauce and the woman who
was holding it proudly in her kitchen announced,
"it's in there!".
Given the product name *and* that advertising I do
not think I need to go much further to tell anyone
what crossed my mind, even back then.
Granted, I think the ads were in the northeast.
------>8 cut ------
What a character, eh?
Post by Eli the Bearded------ cut 8<------
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.d
Subject: Re: {ASSD} Six words
Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2006 16:35:31 -0600
Organization: S.F.P.I.A
Post by BaalThis month's _Wired_ magazine has a piece that features six-word
stories by several prominent authors. It got me wondering - can a good
sex story be written using just six words?
I suppose I should set this up as a challenge or something.
I fucked her. She came too.
--
_____
/ ' / â¢
,-/-, __ __. ____ /_
(_/ / (_(_/|_/ / <_/ <_
------>8 cut ------
Thanks for posting these samples -- this is the first time I had seen these.
I've been thinking about Frank a lot, and when I got the news, it was like a
punch in the gut. Many of us feared that Frank would die in prison, given his
age and pre-existing health conditions. (Given the date of his death, I find
myself wondering if Covid-19 might have been a precipitating factor, given
that Frank was an insulin-dependent diabetic, and diabetics are at higher-
risk for death from Covid-19; I suppose we'll never know.)
What does this say, about a country and its' justice system, that would send
an elderly man (in poor health) to prison for a decade, followed by a further
decade of probation?
I'm convinced that the rationale for this was to silence Frank -- even if he
survived his 10-year sentence, and were released in August 2024, the court
ordered mandatory 10-year probation period would likely have prevented him
going online and expressing himself until he was into his 90s.
Think about the timeline of events, for a moment -- Frank was originally
arrested in 2008, was tried in 2010, and was sentenced in 2013. He then
served about 2 years in prison, after which he was on probation for a further
2 years. Frank was free for less than 6 months, whereupon he was re-arrested,
tried, convicted, and sentenced to 10 years in jail, followed by a further
10 years of probation.
If Frank had survived his jail sentence, and completed the subsequent 10-year
probationary period, this means that the entire period from 2008 to 2034
would have been spent incarcerated, or otherwise under the thumb of the
correctional system. If you add that up, that amounts to some 26 years!
Frank wasn't convicted of murder or manslaughter -- rather, his crime was to
challenge the authorities, in trying to get Miller v. California overturned.
What is truly sad (not to mention ironic) is that the laws that Frank sought
to overturn are now even more firmly cemented into place, after his original
conviction was upheld unanimously on appeal. It would have far been better
for everyone, especially Frank himself, if he had never tried to overturn
the law in the first place.
Frank was bone-headed on this issue; he was absolutely bound and determined
to try to overturn Miller v. California in the courts. I tried to tell him
that it was very unlikely that he would be successful in overturning decades
of settled law, but he simply would not relent. (That said, I hoped he would
be successful, but I think I took a more realistic/cynical view of things
than he did.)
My impression was that Frank put his faith in the Constitution and the
justice system. Very likely that naive faith arose out of a Pollyanna-ish
view of the law, courts and justice system that was fed to Americans of his
generation by the mass-media. Both Frank and I grew up watching episodes of
Perry Mason, in which Mason was always victorious. Many people share this
cartoon-ish view of how the justice system works; it is only when they
themselves (or one of their loved ones) become ensnared in the the clutches
of the 'justice' system that the illusion finally falls-away, and they
realize the truth.
The truth is that the justice system is NOT about truth, justice, or even
fair-play -- rather, it is about processing people through a meat-grinder of
a system with the goal of incarcerating the maximum number of people
possible. It is not for nothing that America, with only 4% of the global
population, nevertheless has 25% of the globe's prisoners.
I have seen references to a study of statistics of the Federal Court system.
This study revealed a remarkable fact: in one-half of the 92 U.S. Federal
Judicial districts, there were NO acquittals whatsoever for the study period:
in other words, there was a 100% conviction rate.
In districts that did report acquittals, they usually numbered no more than
1 or 2 in each district. Each Federal Judicial District handles thousands of
cases per year, and yet the number of acquittals is negligible.
Several years back, there was a piece in the New York Times, where a judge
was interviewed -- he hadn't had a jury trial in the previous 3 years. He
expressed his worry that the right to a jury-trial was becoming endangered.
This is about as far from Perry Mason as one can imagine.
Just look at how far the authorities were willing to go, to put Frank behind
bars:
* They used undercover officers.
* They used a 19th Century law originally designed to criminalize both the
publication and distribution of birth-control information (18 USC §1462)
including links to where such infomation may be found. This is the law
(championed by Anthony Comstock, the 19th Century's most notorious censor)
that was used to convict and imprison Frank for 2 years.
* The Feds both judge-shopped as well as jurisdiction-shopped. They first
tried two judges in McCoy's home state of Minnesota, but both judges
refused to sign an arrest warrant.
They then tried jurisdiction-shopping, trying one of the most conservative
jurisdictions in America: Georgia. Even there, they had to try 3 judges --
the first two, IIRC, refused to sign-off on the arrest warrant.
* The authorities sent a six-person team of U.S. Marshals to effect the
original arrest in January, 2008. Six armed Marshals to arrest one elderly
man in poor health.
* Naturally, Frank appealed his conviction -- he was already out of prison
having completed his sentence, before the appeal decision was handed-down.
The decision to uphold his conviction was unanimous.
* Within a few months of the appeal decision being handed-down, Frank was
re-arrested, and tried as a repeat-offender -- this was used as the reason
that such a harsh sentence/probation conditions were handed-down.
Frank (naively) trusted in the law, and the courts; I, on the other hand,
trust for my safety in the laws of mathematics (i.e. encryption). My personal
security philosophy has always been:
"Better to have it, and not need it, than need it and not have it."
Frank could have very easily used the same email/posting methods that I've
used for decades, which could have prevented everything that he went through,
but he did not wish to do so, based on his incredibly naive trust in the U.S.
legal system.
Frank had the courage of his convictions, I'll give him that, but he paid a
*very* high price for it.
Baal <***@Usenet.org>
PGP Key Fingerprint: 40E4 E9BB D084 22D5 3DE9 66B8 08E3 638C 1E92 C0E8
- --
Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes?" -- "Who will watch the Watchmen?"
-- Juvenal, Satires, VI, 347. circa 128 CE