Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas says he doesn’t want to change Vermont’s laws to lessen the potential penalties for teenagers who use their cell phones to send sexually explicit pictures and messages.
The House is considering a Senate-passed bill that would remove the threat of a child pornography prosecution for a practice called "sexting." Other laws with lesser penalties still could apply.
Douglas says he would rather leave the law unchanged, and allow the state’s prosecutors to decide what, if any, charges to bring in cases of teen sexting.
The Senate-passed bill would affect electronic messages sent between people ages 13 to 18 that contain explicit content, so long as there was no threat or coercion that led to its creation.