United States v. United States District Court for the Central District of California

KOZINSKI, Circuit Judge:

Defendants are charged with violating 18 U.S.C. § 2251(a) (Supp. IV 1986), which prohibits the production of materials depicting a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct. We consider whether they may present evidence that they reasonably believed the minor in question was an adult.

*536Facts

The basic facts are uncontested. In 1984, defendant James Marvin Souter, Jr., a so-called talent agent, hired 16-year-old Traci Lords to appear in a film to be produced by defendants Ronald Renee Kantor and Rupert Sebastian McNee. The film, Those Young Girls, was produced on August…