Lawrence Brose
Lawrence Brose is an experimental film artist and has created over thirty films since 1983. Additionally, he is an arts curator and administrator, and once held the position of Executive Director of CEPA Gallery, Buffalo, NY. As head of this non-profit gallery, he organized groundbreaking exhibitions that were paired with innovative community programs and organizational collaborations that kept the arts vital in Western New York and beyond, even under the most challenging financial climates.[1]
Arrest and conviction
In November 2009, Lawrence Brose was charged in federal court with receiving and possessing internet images of child porn. Brose was initially accused of possessing 1,300 child porn images on his laptop. [2] Michael DiGiacomo is the chief of the general crimes section at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Buffalo. He said, “This stems back to 2006 when the federal agency of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was contacted by a law enforcement agency in Germany and as a result, that’s what started the investigation.” However, court documents show that agents could only prove there was one image of a minor engaging in "sexual explicit conduct" on the laptop. [3]
The defense's case centered around evidence that the laptop computer where the image(s) were found was not in Brose’s exclusive possession and control: it was kept in a studio where many other people had regular access to it. The forensic analysis conducted by the defense demonstrated that the laptop was also infected with a virus that might have permitted remote access and it appears that many of the images that form the basis of the original claim were downloaded at times when Brose was out of the country and did not have access to the computer.[4]
Gradually facts began to emerge which cast the accusations—and the strength of the prosecution’s case—into serious question. The images that ICE was looking for were never found. Many of the images which formed the basis for the indictment were frames from Brose’s film, De Profundis—exhibition prints which have been shown at the Albright-Knox and other world-famous galleries and which were by no stretch of the imagination child pornography. [5]
In the end on Dec. 17, 2014, the 5-year ordeal Brose had faced came to a close when he was forced to plead guilty and accept a plea deal and 2 years’ probation to a lessor obscenity charge with the child pornography charges being dropped.[2]
Films
- An Individual Desires Solution (Short) 2007
- De Profundis 1997
- Long Eyes of Earth (Short) 1990
