Dragon Con co-founder fights charge based on artist's photo

ATLANTA (AP) — With the filing of yet another criminal charge against a co-founder of Dragon Con, his attorney has renewed his call for a prosecutor to be barred from any matter involving his client.

Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter last week secured an indictment against Ed Kramer on a charge of sexual exploitation of children. The indictment says Kramer possessed a digital image showing a minor "engaged in sexually explicit conduct," specifically a naked prepubescent boy "with an unknown substance dripping down from the pubic area of said minor, said image containing the caption 'Popsicle Drips, 1985.'"

That image is a photograph by artist Sally Mann that depicts her son and was published in her book "Immediate Family" in 1992, Kramer's attorney Stephen Reba wrote in a court filing. It doesn't involve a sexual act and cannot be legally interpreted as child pornography, Reba wrote.

This legal back-and-forth is only the latest skirmish in an ongoing legal saga that has entangled Kramer and Porter for nearly two decades.

Kramer co-founded Dragon Con in 1987, and the sci-fi, fantasy and gaming convention draws tens of thousands of visitors to Atlanta over Labor Day weekend every year. He hasn't been involved in the event since he was arrested in August 2000 on charges of molesting teenage brothers.

In that case, Kramer ultimately entered a plea in December 2013 that carried the consequences of a guilty verdict, including registering as a sex offender, but allowed him to maintain his innocence.

More recently, Kramer was indicted Sept. 18 along with Gwinnett County Superior Court Judge Kathryn Schrader and two others. They were accused of of illegally accessing the Gwinnett County Justice Center computer network in February and charged with criminal...