Material found on judge Alex Kozinski's site, which has now been blocked, included a video of a half-naked man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal and a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows, along with images of masturbation and contortionist sex.

Koziniski is the chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the largest in the country. It has jurisdiction over nine western states

Prosecutors requested stay to explore the obvious conflict of interest that could be created by the presiding judge having a sexually explicit website with similar material to what is on trial. The filmmaker, Ira Isaacs, is accused of distributing criminally obscene sexual fetish videos.

Isaacs faces up to 20 years in jail and a huge fine if convicted of selling criminally obscene fetish videos depicting bestiality and defecation.

But his trial at the Los Angeles Federal Court was put on hold just hours after it opened a few days ago after an LA Times report about obscene material posted online by Judge Alex Kozinski. The judge agreed to the prosecution's request for a 48-hour delay so that the Justice Department could look into possible issues of prejudice in the case.

According to the LA Times, the material on Kozinski's website could only be accessed by those who knew to type in the name of a subdirectory to which there was no visible link. Apart from family documents and photographs there were also images of masturbation and public sex as well as a "slide show striptease featuring a transsexual and a folder that contained a series of photos of women's crotches in snug-fitting clothing or underwear".