Yesterday, the Fifth Circuit made it official: The two child-porn restitution orders for Michael Wright and Doyle Paroline, which made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, are now vacated and remanded to the district court.
And while the two orders were brief and uneventful, it seems likely that these cases will return at some point. After all, not only are there causation issues and ever more defendants (the images are still widely traded online by pedophiles), but the Supreme Court barely helped the issue by vaguely ordering the lower courts to order “restitution in an amount that comports with the defendant’s relative role in the causal process that underlies the victim’s general losses.”
Relative role. In an ever-increasing pool of hundreds, if not thousands of defendants. Expect a lot more litigation.
Don’t be shocked to see either of the defendants, or the victims’ lawyers, appeal whatever the district court comes up with.