Barbs exchanged in child-porn case

The bad blood between a federal prosecutor and the defense attorney in a child-porn case against a Delaware County man has gotten personal.

Prosecutor Michelle Rotella suggests the defendant's lawyer hasn't been completely forthright with the court. The lawyer, S. Lee Ruslander II, says Rotella is corrupt.

When authorities arrested John Jackey Worman in January, they seized 11,000 videos he made allegedly showing him sexually abusing 10 child victims.

Rotella wants a federal judge to limit how many videos Worman can review for his defense and how long he has to review them.

At a court hearing on July 9, Rotella said the feds plan on using only 60 of the videos as evidence. Ruslander said the defense was legally entitled to see all 11,000 videos and the judge should allow "sufficient time" to review the material.

Prosecutors are concerned that without reasonable limits, the trial might be delayed for years.

Last month, the feds halted the discovery process after an FBI agent said Worman and Ruslander, who had been viewing the child-porn videos in "real time," often rewound them and zoomed in on the victims' genitals.

Rotella said Ruslander told the judge such scrutiny was necessary because he hadn't seen "this stuff" since his own kids were in diapers 16 years ago.

Earlier this week, Rotella filed court papers claiming Ruslander had "extensive experience" defending child-porn cases and thus didn't need as much time to review the videos as somebody "unfamiliar" with such crimes.

She cited 17 cases involving child porn or related matters she said Ruslander had defended just in Chester County, where his law offices are located.

She also included copies of ads he placed in the Yellow Pages and on his Web site, touting his defense of Internet crimes, porn and child sex abuse.

"The venom with which she has undertaken the task of smearing the defendant and now defense counsel should result in her removal as prosecutor in this case," Ruslander fumed in a court filing.

He said the Worman case is the first case he has defended involving videos of children having sex with adults. He said most of the cases cited by Rotella were guilty pleas and did not involve videos or photos. *