His lawyer, Lawrence Walters of Orlando, said Wilson's parents arranged their son's release Monday but he wasn't let out of jail until Tuesday afternoon because it took so long to process the 301 bonds -- one for each of the 300 misdemeanor counts and one felony count filed against Wilson.

A Sheriff's Office employee at the jail said that it took all day to process the 301 bonds.

Wilson's bail had been set at a total of $151,000 for the charges. His parents made arrangements with a bail bond agency to put up the bail and paid the agency a fee of $30,100.

The family had struggled to make bail over the weekend, because Wilson was charged with so many individual obscenity counts.

His lawyer asked the State Attorney's Office to combine all the charges for the purposes of posting bail, which would have meant his parents would have paid $15,100 -- 10 percent of the total bail -- to the bond company. The State Attorney's Office refused, which required the parents to pay $30,100 because state law requires that the minimum paid for each charge be set at no less than $100.

Wilson operated an adult Web site out of his Lakeland apartment. The site became controversial after it started running photos, allegedly sent in by soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, showing scenes of dead men and women, purported to be insurgents. Many of the dead were horribly mutilated.

Wilson defended his Web site in recent interviews, saying that the pictures show the uncensored reality of war.

Wilson was arrested on charges relating to the amateur pornography section of his Web site, not the dead body pictures.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said that the pornography on the site "shocks the conscience of the community."

Update ...

Owner of Porn Site Still in Jail

The Ledger, 12/26/05 - The U.S. Supreme Court gave Christopher Wilson, who is accused of operating a pornography Web site, coal in his stocking instead of the Christmas present he was hoping for -- release from the Polk County Jail.

On Sunday, the clerk of the Supreme Court told Wilson's lawyer that the court had rejected an emergency request filed by e-mail Saturday. That request asked for a reversal of the 10th Judicial Circuit Court's decision to revoke Wilson's bail.

"A stay was not granted on an emergency basis," Wilson's lawyer, Lawrence Walters, said Sunday.

The struggle will now return this week to state courts where the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Lakeland will consider a motion to release Wilson. Last week, the 2nd DCA rejected an emergency petition to free Wilson pending a full hearing.

Wilson, a lifelong Lakeland resident, was arrested at his apartment Oct. 7 by Polk County Sheriff's Office deputies on 301 misdemeanor obscenity charges and one felony charge. Wilson had been running a Web site in which he allowed users to post pictures of their nude wives or girlfriends.

Wilson was released on bail, moved out of the county, and continued running his Web site.

On Dec. 16, his bail was revoked after a hearing in which Deputy Charles Gates showed Circuit Judge J. Dale Durrance new pictures and videos that the Sheriff's Office claimed were obscene.

Assistant State Attorney Brad Copley said a condition of Wilson's bail was that he not break the law while awaiting trial. The State Attorney's Office claimed in the motion to revoke Wilson's bail that the new pictures were obscene, and therefore he had broken the law.

Wilson's lawyer, Walters, said his firm had never encountered a filing like that in its history.

He said it represented punishment prior to the trial, and that the pictures Wilson had In the Supreme Court filing, Walters asked that the nation's highest court determine whether "pre-trial bail revocation of persons for alleged obscenity offenses involving images only of adults, prior to any final determination of obscenity, has too severe a chilling effect on expression to be allowed by the First Amendment . . ."

He was not given any reason for the Supreme Court's decision not to consider his motion.

The ACLU has also filed briefs in the case asking that the 2nd DCA reverse Durrance's decision.

Update ...
Plea Bargain Kills Porn War Website

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