Opinion ID: 2151244
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Obscenity as a matter of law.

Text: The question of obscenity is not exclusively one of fact. It has been termed a mixed question of fact and constitutional law. This court has recognized that a judgment of obscenity is not an ordinarily issue of fact, but rather one also involving issues of legal and constitutional interpretation. McCauley v. Tropic of Cancer (1963), 20 Wis. 2d 134, 148, 121 N. W. 2d 545. In the McCauley Case there was no verdict to review; and this court based its reversal on an independent reading of the book involved. The defendants contend that the magazines they were convicted for selling are similar to those involved in other cases where lower court obscenity convictions were reversed per curiam by the United States Supreme Court, and that, as a result, they are not obscene as a matter of law. In these cases, the reversals contain no discussion whatsoever, but only a bare reference to Redrup, supra . In support of their contention that the three magazines here involved are, as a matter of law, not obscene, defendants describe the materials involved in several per curiam  Redrup reversals. While a few of these casesnotably, Central Magazine Sales, Ltd. v. United States (1967), 389 U. S. 50, 88 Sup. Ct. 235, 19 L. Ed. 2d 49,may have involved magazines bearing similarity to one of the magazines here involved, the other cases dealt with books, films and other items bearing no resemblance to the instant materials. Central Magazines Sales, Ltd. v. United States, supra , dealt with an appeal from United States v. 392 Copies of Magazine Entitled Exclusive (D. C. Md. 1966), 253 Fed. Supp. 485, which was affirmed by the Fourth Circuit in 1967 (373 Fed. 2d 633). In that case, the circuit court of appeals, at page 634, described the magazine as follows:  Exclusive is a collection of photographs of young women. In most of them, long stockings and garter belts are employed to frame the public area and to focus attention upon it. A suggestion of masochism is sought by the use in many of the pictures of chains binding the model's wrists and ankles. Some of the seated models, squarely facing the camera, have their knees and legs widespread in order to reveal the genital area in its entirety. In one of the pictures, all of these things are combined: The model, clad only in a framing black garter belt and black stockings is chained to a chair upon which she is seated, facing the camera, with one knee elevated and both spread wide. We agree with the District Court that these apparently unretouched pictures of young women, posed as they are, are patently offensive and that the magazine Exclusive is obscene. We think the magazines here involved are more than a collection of photographs of nude men and women which suggest sexual activity. In the instant case much of the material concerns itself with the depiction of sexual activity. The jury in this case, after receiving instructions based on Roth [2] and succeeding cases, returned verdicts of guilty to charges of selling obscene materials. An independent review of the magazines here involved reveals their similarities to, and differences from, the materials involved in the cases cited by appellants. We conclude that the decisions cited by appellants form an insufficient basis for a ruling that these materials are not obscene as a matter of law.