Ex-Infoseek exec says chat room was just fantasy

LOS ANGELES -- Lawyers for former Infoseek Corp. executive Patrick Naughton lifted the curtain at a pre-trial hearing Monday on the novel strategy they will use to defend him against charges of soliciting sex with a minor on the Internet. His case, they say, represents a collision of two worlds where no one is what they seem to be.

There's the fantasy-filled online world, his lawyers contend, where people are understood to be pretending to be minors to enhance sexual intrigue. And there's the law-enforcement world where, they add, police don't understand that nuance of the Net and entrap unwitting suspects with disguises of their own -- officers posing as children.

The two worlds collided for the former Internet industry superstar on the September day when he went to the Santa Monica pier to meet a woman who his lawyers said Naughton believed had posed in online chat forums as a 13-year-old girl. The FBI claims his intent was to have sex with a minor. His lawyers say he never thought the ``girl'' actually was underage.

``He never believed this was a 13-year-old,'' said Donald Marks, one of four attorneys appearing Monday in federal district court.

``This is the Internet,'' said Marks, almost as if he was revealing a new world to the judge. ``It's a virtual world of fantasy.'' Naughton, the former Infoseek executive arrested Sept. 16, faces three felony charges and up to 35 years in prison.

He appeared Monday wearing a black suit flanked by his lawyers but apparently no family members. The 34-year-old Seattle resident, known as a brash, self-confident marketing and technological whiz, took the stand briefly and answered perfunctory questions about his professional background.

Naughton's defense team, chatting with the press during a break, said they had no intention of settling the case but instead would mount an aggressive defense.

While legal experts had expected they would argue Naughton was unlawfully entrapped, Marks revealed a wide-ranging defense that points to the peculiarities of new Internet technology to legitimize what may seem to be criminal behavior.

The defense put forth six motions to delay the trial, dismiss the charges or withdraw some of the evidence collected. U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie is expected to rule on the motions today. He did rule Monday that the trial, which was to begin today , would be delayed until Dec. 7 to give the defense time to analyze Naughton's computer hard-drive from his job at Sunnyvale-based Infoseek, where he was executive vice president.

No intent for sex

Naughton's lawyers' assertion that he had no intention of meeting and having sex with an underage girl strikes directly at the government's first two charges: that Naughton used the Internet to arrange sex with a minor and then traveled over state lines in order to have sex with a 13-year-old. All along, his attorneys say, he thought anyone posing as a 13-year-old online would really be engaging in their own fantasy and would in actuality be an adult, especially because many chat rooms have postings saying that only adults can participate. Defense attorneys hinted they might produce witnesses who could attest that adults pose as minors in sex-chat rooms.

For its part, the government will need to demonstrate Naughton's intent at the time leading up to his arrest, experts say. The world of chat rooms could make that difficult.

``The extent to which chat rooms reflect reality and the extent to which they represent fantasy is an issue we haven't heard before,'' said Tom Nolan, a Palo Alto defense lawyer. ``The problem is that you don't have any way to tell. . . .  I think it is a fairly well-known phenomenon that there is an enormous amount of pretending in chat rooms.''

Laura Victoria, a San Francisco freelancer who has written extensively about adult Web sites for the adult industry's main trade publication, said she knows people who routinely use these rooms, looking to talk with others who, at least for cyber-appearances, claim to be under-age. ``There's a kind of suspended disbelief you enter into in these rooms. It's like everyone is suddenly willing to buy the Brooklyn Bridge once they enter a chat room.''

``It's like you split into two; part of your brain knows you're being sold a Brooklyn Bridge. But another part of you really wants to believe it and you'll do anything -- including contacting the other person or sending them your phone number and address and even a photo -- to live out the fantasy.''

But Barry Portman, a federal public defender in San Francisco, said the defense would have a hard time arguing that Naughton came to Santa Monica just to observe whether he would find an adult or ``18-year-old Lolita. . .  The supposition is that you take trips like that in hopes of the latter rather than the former,'' Portman said.

Naughton approached a person he believed was a grown woman on the pier and asked her to meet him on the beach, his lawyers said. Then FBI agents approached him as he was walking away, and placed him under arrest. But the drama didn't end there.

When he arrived at the police substation in Santa Monica, he saw the woman, who was an undercover agent, crying with two people who appeared to be her parents nearby.

Continued pretending

Amber Braaten, a sheriff's deputy posing as the girl, testified Monday that she continued pretending so that Naughton wouldn't think that she was an adult. At one point, she said, ``My mom is going to kill me.''

``The game plan was to stay in character,'' said Braaten, who is petite and blond.

``The decoy is sitting there crying,'' Naughton's attorney Marks said. ``My client is saying to himself, `That's a 13-year-old girl. I can't believe it. That's a parent. I can't believe it.' ''

This ``psychological coercion,'' as Marks called it, led Naughton to panic, sign a form to give up his Miranda rights to remain silent and be represented by a lawyer -- even though he had demanded these rights at the beginning and was denied them. He also gave consent then to search his car and laptop computer. On the laptop, investigators found more than 400 pornographic images, but nine images of children under age, according to the FBI.

In Monday's court session, Assistant U.S. Attorney Patricia Donahue argued that Naughton is a grown, educated, successful man who knew what he was doing when he waived his rights and permitted investigators to search his property, even checking off with his initials on each line of the waiver form. ``He was hardly duped,'' said Donahue. ``He was hardly psychologically coerced by someone crying.''

On another matter, Marks argued that the defense had only just received the hard-drive from Naughton's Infoseek computer and hadn't had time to analyze it. The drive will show that Naughton did receive pornography but that he made it a practice of deleting any unsolicited images that came to him, Marks said. Signaling another element of the defense strategy, Marks told the judge the receipt of unsolicited images makes this case unique. ``This didn't exist before the computer.'' Nolan said ``having a pornographic image on your computer doesn't mean that you looked at it. I wouldn't want to convict someone on the basis it was on their computer.''

As the court went in and out of session Monday, Naughton carried the novel-sized hard drive in a small cardboard Maxtor box held together by electrical tape. At one point in the hearing, Marks asked Naughton about the size of information in the hard drive and the time it would take to analyze it. He reported back that it's a six-gigabyte drive that would take four weeks to analyze.

The judge gave the defense one week.