Opinion ID: 580788
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Unconstitutional Chill

Text: 30 Adult Video contends that the combination of RICO's severe penalty provisions, the nebulous definition of obscenity, and the absence of a rigorous scienter requirement for obscenity offenses hangs like a Sword of Damocles over those engaged in sexually explicit speech, unconstitutionally chilling protected communication. 31 Adult Video's concerns about the fragility of sexually explicit speech and the likely consequences of its entanglement in this regulatory web have great practical appeal. The Supreme Court, however, has already rejected an essentially identical argument in Fort Wayne Books. There the Supreme Court found unpersuasive the bookstore operators' contention that the inherent vagueness of Miller's obscenity standard and the draconian penalties attaching to a RICO conviction in Indiana transgressed the First Amendment. The Court characterized the vagueness argument as nothing less than an invitation to overturn Miller--an invitation that we reject. 489 U.S. at 57, 109 S.Ct. at 924; see also Alexander v. Thornburgh, 943 F.2d 825, 832 (8th Cir.1991). 32 Here, as in Fort Wayne Books, the RICO statute simply incorporates the state and federal obscenity laws--laws which Adult Video does not contend violate Miller's constitutional limitations on the definition of obscenity. Whatever vagueness or indefiniteness plagues these statutes is, as long as Miller remains good law, constitutionally tolerable. Transporting these laws into RICO does not exacerbate the haziness of the obscenity definition. It simply alters the format for prosecuting repeated violations of the obscenity laws. See Fort Wayne Books, 489 U.S. at 58, 109 S.Ct. at 925 (Given that the RICO statute totally encompasses the obscenity law, if the latter is not unconstitutionally vague, the former cannot be vague either.); Alexander v. Thornburgh, 713 F.Supp. 1278, 1291 & n. 7 (D.Minn.), appeal dismissed, 881 F.2d 1081 (8th Cir.1989). 33 The Supreme Court also dismissed the bookstore operators' objections to Indiana's stiff RICO penalties by declaring any additional deterrent effect on protected speech to be the inevitable consequence of the criminal law's legitimate efforts to deter and to punish obscenity: 34 It may be true that the stiffer RICO penalties will provide an additional deterrent to those who might otherwise sell obscene materials; perhaps this means--as petitioner suggests--that some cautious booksellers will practice self-censorship and remove First Amendment protected materials from their shelves. But deterrence of the sale of obscene materials is a legitimate end of state antiobscenity laws, and our cases have long recognized the practical reality that any form of criminal obscenity statute applicable to a bookseller will induce some tendency to self-censorship and have some inhibitory effect on the dissemination of material not obscene. 35 Id., 489 U.S. at 60, 109 S.Ct. at 925-26 (quoting Smith v. California, 361 U.S. 147, 154-55, 80 S.Ct. 215, 219, 4 L.Ed.2d 205 (1959)) (citation omitted); see also Sequoia Books, 901 F.2d at 637 (The in terrorem effects of which Sequoia complains are simply the intended by-product of a legislative decision to punish those who deal in obscene materials and to make that business more costly.); United States v. Pryba, 900 F.2d 748, 756 (4th Cir.) (chill caused by RICO penalties does not violate the First Amendment because [t]he fact that a person does some business disseminating protected materials cannot immunize that person from [penalties] that may be imposed for violation of criminal law) (quotation omitted), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 305, 112 L.Ed.2d 258 (1990); Polykoff, 816 F.2d at 1340 n. 9. 36 Fort Wayne Books is thus dispositive of Adult Video's unconstitutional chill argument.