Biglaw

Ex-Skadden Partner Avoids Jail, But Gets Disbarred Over Child Porn Conviction

He had approximately 600 sexually explicit images of minors.

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Edmund Duffy had an illustrious legal career as a corporate and international trade expert. He was once the head of the China practice at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and helped the firm achieve its status at the top of the Biglaw food chain. But on Thursday, two years after retiring from Skadden, he was disbarred after he pleaded guilty to child pornography charges.

Duffy was arrested in July 2016 — only a few months after he’d left Biglaw — after a sting operation in which FBI agents infiltrated a P2P file-sharing network. According to the prosecution, Duffy — who went by the username “Daddisc” — had ~600 sexually explicit images of minors in his possession. During the execution of a search warrant, the government also says Duffy told agents he liked to “view images and videos of adults and children between the ages of 10 and 14 being spanked.”

As reported by the New York Law Journal, Duffy’s attorney, John “Rusty” Wing of Lankler Siffert & Wohl, argued for leniency in sentencing. Wing used Duffy’s age, poor health, nonprofit work, and um well, the fact that it wasn’t the most horrific forms of child pornography to argue against jail time:

Court records show that Wing unsuccessfully sought to seal the transcript of a sentencing hearing on June 27, 2017, before U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest of the Southern District of New York that delved into the circumstances of the charges against Duffy. The ex-Skadden partner’s defense lawyers, while acknowledging their client’s guilty, had in a footnote to a brief seeking leniency from the court stated that many of the offending images downloaded by Duffy were on the less extreme of the pornography spectrum and essentially child nudes that could be considered art in some places.

Forrest, a former partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, reacted negatively to that contention, noting that “these are not just pictures of children naked floating in a pool like the Nirvana album cover,” a reference to the grunge band’s iconic and controversial 1991 classic “Nevermind.” In Duffy’s favor at his sentencing was the fact that he had no prior criminal record, no personal sexual contact with children and did not sell images that he obtained online.

Though Forrest may not have like the insinuation that somehow Duffy’s collection was an okay or at least less awful form of child pornography, she did, ultimately, take pity on Duffy, saying:

“I will tell you that I believe in every other crime, child pornography crime like this that I had, even for possession, I have incarcerated every single other defendant,” Forrest said. “I will tell you that I find the description of the images that you were reviewing extremely disturbing … I am disturbed by this, but I am also not prepared to impose a sentence which I think might kill you.”

Duffy avoided prison but must serve five years’ probation, pay $9,000 in restitution to victims, forfeit $256,000, perform 1,800 hours of community service, participate in a computer internet monitoring program, and register as a sex offender.

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headshotKathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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