Opinion ID: 1435633
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Challenge to Jury Instructions Defining Obscenity

Text: The Defendants challenge their convictions on Counts 4 through 7 on the ground that the district court erred in instructing the jury as to the definition of obscene expression regulated by 18 U.S.C. §§ 1462 and 1465. Obscene expression is not protected by the First Amendment. Kois v. Wisconsin, 408 U.S. 229, 230, 92 S.Ct. 2245, 33 L.Ed.2d 312 (1972). Since the Supreme Court's holding in Miller v. California, the test for determining whether a work is subject to regulation as obscenity has the following three prongs: (a) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable ... law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. 413 U.S. 15, 24, 93 S.Ct. 2607 (1973) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). Though Miller involved application of a state obscenity statute, the Miller test has subsequently been found to define regulated speech for purposes of federal obscenity statutes such as §§ 1462 and 1465, as well. See Hamling v. United States, 418 U.S. 87, 106, 94 S.Ct. 2887, 41 L.Ed.2d 590 (1974); United States v. Schales, 546 F.3d 965, 973 (9th Cir.2008). Defendants' challenge to the adequacy of the jury instructions' definition of obscenity focuses on the instructions' explication of the meaning of the term contemporary community standards. The application of contemporary community standards in defining obscenity is intended to ensure that so far as material is not aimed at a deviant group, it will be judged by its impact on an average person, rather than a particularly susceptible or sensitive personor indeed a totally insensitive one. Miller, 413 U.S. at 33, 93 S.Ct. 2607. The Court, in line with this view, has held, in a case involving obscenity disseminated via the regular mails, that for purposes of federal obscenity statutes no precise geographical area need be applied in defining contemporary community standards. Hamling, 418 U.S. at 105, 94 S.Ct. 2887. As a result, in federal obscenity prosecutions, a juror may simply draw on knowledge of the community or vicinage from which he comes in determining contemporary community standards. Id. Defendants raise alternative arguments as to why the district court improperly instructed the jury about the meaning of contemporary community standards. Defendants first assert that the district court erred by instructing the jurors to apply the standards of communities beyond their own community or of a global community in determining contemporary community standards, contravening Hamling 's expectation that jurors would look only to their own local community's standards. Second, Defendants argue that as the obscenity at issue was transported via email, the district court erred by failing to hold that existing precedent was inapplicable and instructing the jury to determine contemporary community standards by reference to the national community. Hence, in a sense, Defendants argue the instructions fell between two stools. In the view of Defendants, the instructions neither complied with the localized definition of contemporary community standards mandated by existing precedent, nor complied with the national definition of contemporary community standards that Defendants propose we should now hold is applicable to expression disseminated through email. We review these alternative contentions in sequence.
We review de novo whether a jury instruction misstates an element of a crime, and we review for abuse of discretion a district court's formulation of an instruction. United States v. Peterson, 538 F.3d 1064, 1070 (9th Cir.2008). Any omission or misstatement of an element of an offense in the jury instructions is constitutional error and, therefore, requires reversal unless we find the error harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967); see Hedgpeth v. Pulido, ___ U.S. ___, 129 S.Ct. 530, 532, 172 L.Ed.2d 388 (2008). However, `[i]n the absence of a timely objection to the jury instructions, we review for plain error.' Peterson, 538 F.3d at 1070 (quoting United States v. Moran, 493 F.3d 1002, 1009 (9th Cir.2007) (per curiam)). Plain error review requires us to find (1) an error that is (2) plain and (3) affects substantial rights. Even if these conditions were met, we may only exercise our discretion to correct the error if it seriously affects the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings. Id. at 1071-72 (quoting United States v. Nash, 115 F.3d 1431, 1437 (9th Cir.1997)) (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted).
Defendants assert first that the jury instructions failed to comply with the prevailing definition of contemporary community standards for purposes of federal obscenity prosecutions outlined in Hamling. Defendants object specifically to various phrases in the district court's Jury Instruction Number 36 defining obscenity, claiming they impermissibly allowed the jurors to rely on standards outside their own community or on some broad global standard in determining contemporary community standards. First, Defendants object to the instruction's reference to contemporary community standards as involving what is in fact accepted in the community as a whole; that is to say by society at large, or people in general, and not merely by what the community tolerates nor by what some persons or groups of persons may believe the community as a whole ought to accept or refuse to accept. (Emphasis added.) Second, Defendants object to the portion of the instruction stating: The `community' you should consider in deciding these questions is not defined by a precise geographic area. You may consider evidence of standards existing in places outside of this particular district. Finally, Defendants object to the portion of the instruction stating: The parties have presented evidence concerning contemporary community standards. You should consider the evidence presented, but you may also consider your own experience and judgment in determining contemporary community standards. Defendants assert this final portion is problematic because the only evidence of community standards presented by the Government related to communities outside the district where the prosecution occurred. Defendants objected to all these portions of the instruction in the district court. We conclude, applying the prevailing definition of contemporary community standards put forth in Hamling, that the challenged portions do not constitute prejudicial error. See Chapman, 386 U.S. at 24, 87 S.Ct. 824 (reversal required unless error is harmless beyond reasonable doubt). The portion of the instruction stating that the relevant community lacks a precise geographic definition follows directly from Hamling 's holding that the relevant community is not to be geographically defined in federal obscenity prosecutions, permitting the jury to apply their own sense of what contemporary community standards are, based on their own community. Hamling, 418 U.S. 104-05, 94 S.Ct. 2887; see also United States v. Cutting, 538 F.2d 835, 841 (9th Cir.1976) (en banc) (stating contemporary community standards is a general standard, not a geographic one); United States v. Dachsteiner, 518 F.2d 20, 22 (9th Cir.1975) (Neither Miller nor Hamling ... requires the trial court to define the relevant community in metes and bounds.). No authority supports the Defendants' contrary notion that a district court must provide a clear geographic definition of the relevant community in a federal prosecution. Hence, the geographic definition instruction in of itself was entirely appropriate. Similarly, the challenged portion of the instruction explicitly and implicitly allowing jurors to consider evidence of standards existing in places outside of the district is clearly permitted under Hamling. There, the Court found that, though jurors would most likely draw from the standards of the community they came from in determining contemporary community standards, this is not to say that a district court would not be at liberty to admit evidence of standards existing in some place outside of this particular district, if it felt such evidence would assist the jurors in the resolution of the issues which they were to decide. 418 U.S. at 106, 94 S.Ct. 2887; cf. United States v. Danley, 523 F.2d 369, 370 (9th Cir.1975) (While ... it is permissible in federal prosecution to define the state as a community, it is clear from Hamling that consideration may be given to standards without the state. (citations omitted)). We read this statement in Hamling as recognizing the entirely logical proposition that evidence of standards of communities outside the district may in a court's judgment help jurors gauge what their own sense of contemporary community standards are. Allowing jurors to consider such evidence is acceptable as long as jurors are properly instructed that they are to apply their own sense of what contemporary community standards are. The challenged instructions did exactly this and, therefore, in no way contravene Hamling. Furthermore, at trial neither the Government nor Defendants argued that the jury should apply anything other than their own sense of what contemporary community standards are. Both parties referenced the evidence of community standards outside the district merely as one piece of evidence to consider in determining contemporary community standards. Hence, even were we to accept Defendants' view that the instructions could be read as permitting application of the standards of some community other than that of the jurors, neither party made any argument urging them to do so. [4] The instruction's references to society at large and people in general are also not objectionable. Defendants assert that these references indicated that the relevant contemporary community standard is a global or societal one. However, the two references instead simply form part of a general instruction to apply the standards of the community as a whole and not of specific persons or groups, which is the rationale for defining obscenity by reference to contemporary community standards. Miller, 413 U.S. at 33, 93 S.Ct. 2607. This may have been made clearer had the instructions said the community at large, rather than society at large, but even as written we see no likelihood that the jury would have drawn from the challenged references, read in context, the view that the community standard they must apply is that of all of society or of the world. See Hamling, 418 U.S. at 107-08, 94 S.Ct. 2887 ([J]ury instructions are to be judged as a whole, rather than by picking isolated phrases from them.); Dachsteiner, 518 F.2d at 21 (We have frequently held that jury instructions are to be judged as a whole, rather than by picking isolated phrases from them.) [5] Even assuming the challenged references erroneously allowed the jury to apply a global community standard, we conclude Defendants were not prejudiced. The Government at no point presented evidence to the jury purporting to illustrate a global or societal community standard and at no point argued to the jury for application of such a standard. The only reference to a global or communal community standard was in fact made by Defendants, necessarily implying that such a standard would be more tolerant of sexually explicit material than a local standard. Absent any argument or evidence presented to the jury illustrating a global or societal community standard less tolerant than that of the jurors' own sense of contemporary community standards, instruction to the jury allowing application of a global standard or societal standard is harmless. Cf. Cutting, 538 F.2d at 841 ([W]hen an instruction has been given in terms of a `national' standard, the essence of the question of prejudice is whether the instruction may have led the jury to apply some specialized test that might differ to the defendant's disadvantage from a generalized `average person, applying contemporary community standards' test.); Dachsteiner, 518 F.2d at 22 (finding no probability of prejudice from instructions referencing national community standard because [t]he record contains no evidence that would have tended to persuade the jury that national standards of obscenity are more strict than those in the Northern District of California). [6] Hence, we conclude the district court's instruction on the meaning of contemporary community standards was not prejudicial error according to the prevailing definition of obscenity in federal prosecutions. We now turn to Defendants' alternative claim that the district court erred in not finding the prevailing definition of obscenity inapplicable to works disseminated via email communication.
Defendants assert in the alternative that Hamling 's prevailing definition of contemporary community standards is not appropriate for speech disseminated via email. Because persons utilizing email to distribute possibly obscene works cannot control which geographic community their works will enter, Defendants argue that applying Hamling 's definition of contemporary community standards to works distributed via email unavoidably subjects such works to the standards of the least tolerant community in the country. This, Defendants assert, unacceptably burdens First Amendment protected speech. To avoid this constitutional problem, Defendants argue, obscenity disseminated via email must be defined according to a national community standard. Defendants, however, did not raise this argument in the district court. Accordingly, we review the district court's failure to instruct the jury to apply a national community standard for plain error. Peterson, 538 F.3d at 1070. We agree with Defendants that the district court should have instructed the jury to apply a national community standard, but we do not conclude that the district court's failure to do so was plain error. Defendants' argument is not an entirely novel one. In Sable Communications of California, Inc. v. FCC, 492 U.S. 115, 109 S.Ct. 2829, 106 L.Ed.2d 93 (1989), the Court rejected in part a facial challenge to a federal statute criminalizing the interstate transmission of obscene commercial telephone recordings. The appellant there offered sexually oriented telephone recordings nationally through the Pacific Bell telephone network. Id. at 117-18, 109 S.Ct. 2829. The appellant argued in part that the federal obscenity legislation under which it was prosecuted place[d] message senders in a `double bind' by compelling them to tailor all their messages to the least tolerant community. Id. at 124, 109 S.Ct. 2829. The Court, relying on its previous holding in Hamling, reaffirmed that the relevant contemporary community standards for defining obscenity under federal laws were not that of the national community and that the burden thereby placed on distributors of complying with varying local standards did not violate the First Amendment. Id. at 124-26, 94 S.Ct. 2887. However, in so ruling, the Court noted that the appellant was free to tailor its messages, on a selective basis, if it so chooses, to the communities it chooses to serve and that if the appellant's audience is comprised of different communities with different local standards, [the appellant] ultimately bears the burden of complying with the prohibition on obscene messages. Id. at 125-26, 94 S.Ct. 2887. Defendants assert that speech disseminated via email is distinguishable from the speech disseminated via regular mails or telephone at issue in Hamling and Sable because there is no means to control where geographically their messages will be received. Hence, they cannot tailor their message to the specific communities into which they disseminate their speech and truly must comply with the standards of the least tolerant community in a manner the defendants in Hamling and Sable did not. The Supreme Court has analogously recognized that the application of localized community standards to define regulated indecent and obscene Internet speech may generate constitutional concerns for exactly this reason. In Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844, 117 S.Ct. 2329, 138 L.Ed.2d 874 (1997), the Supreme Court declared certain provisions of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) facially overbroad in violation of the First Amendment. The CDA provisions at issue in Reno sought to regulate obscene or indecent expression on the Internet relying on contemporary community standards to define regulated speech. Id. at 858-60, 117 S.Ct. 2329. The Court listed as one among several issues of facial overbreadth in the CDA that the `community standards' criterion as applied to the Internet means that any communication available to a nation wide audience will be judged by the standards of the community most likely to be offended by the message. Id. at 877-78, 117 S.Ct. 2329. [7] Reno did not address, however, Defendants' argument that the application of local community standards to regulate Internet obscenity by itself renders a statute fatally overbroad. The Supreme Court's fractured decision in Ashcroft v. ACLU, 535 U.S. 564, 122 S.Ct. 1700, 152 L.Ed.2d 771 (2002), most directly addresses Defendants' argument. In Ashcroft, the Court reviewed the constitutionality of the Child Online Privacy Act, the narrower successor law to the Communications Decency Act, which sought to regulate material harmful to minors transmitted via the World Wide Web for commercial purposes. Id. at 569, 122 S.Ct. 1700. The Third Circuit concluded that COPA was facially overbroad on the narrow ground that it identified material harmful to minors, utilizing a test that relied on contemporary community standards. ACLU v. Reno, 217 F.3d 162, 173-74 (3d Cir.2000). The Third Circuit found that COPA's use of contemporary community standards was constitutionally problematic because Web publishers are without any means to limit access to their sites based on the geographic location of particular Internet users. Id. at 175. The Supreme Court vacated the Third Circuit judgment, holding that COPA's reliance on community standards ... does not by itself render the statute substantially overbroad for purposes of the First Amendment. Ashcroft, 535 U.S. at 585, 122 S.Ct. 1700 (emphasis in original); see id. at 597, 122 S.Ct. 1700 (Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment). However, the eight Justices concurring in the judgment applied divergent reasoning to justify the Court's holding. Justice Thomas, joined by two other justices, recognized that, regardless of whether a national or local community standard was used for defining material harmful to minors under COPA, the variance in community standards across the country could still cause juries in different locations to reach inconsistent conclusions as to whether a particular work is `harmful to minors.' Id. at 577, 122 S.Ct. 1700. Justice Thomas, nonetheless, did not find this variance in community standards constitutionally problematic because COPA was, unlike the CDA, narrow in application. Id. at 578-84, 122 S.Ct. 1700. As a result, Justice Thomas found controlling the rulings of Hamling and Sable condoning variance in local community standards. Id. Justice Thomas did not view as constitutionally significant that distributors of potentially obscene material via the Internet could not control where the material was read. Id. at 583, 122 S.Ct. 1700. Justice Thomas explained: If a publisher wishes for its material to be judged only by the standards of particular communities, then it need only take the simple step of utilizing a medium that enables it to target the release of its material into those communities. Id. Were Justice Thomas's opinion the opinion of the Court, we would likely be compelled to reject the Defendants' position. Justice Thomas's opinion both denies the utility of and need for applying a national community standard in defining Internet obscenity. But Justice Thomas's blanket dismissal of the overbreadth problem identified by the Third Circuit was not joined by a majority of the Court. The remaining two Justices forming the majority were much less sanguine about the application of local community standards in defining Internet obscenity. Justice O'Connor, writing for herself, agreed with Justice Thomas that the respondents had failed to demonstrate on the record before the Court that any variance in local community standards supported a finding that COPA was facially overbroad. Id. at 586, 122 S.Ct. 1700. However, Justice O'Connor believed that respondents' failure to prove substantial overbreadth on a facial challenge in this case still leaves open the possibility that the use of local community standards will cause problems for regulation of obscenity on the Internet, for adults as well as children, in future cases. Id. at 587, 122 S.Ct. 1700. In Justice O'Connor's view, given Internet speakers' inability to control the geographic location of their audience, expecting them to bear the burden of controlling the recipients of their speech, as we did in Hamling and Sable, may be entirely too much to ask, and would potentially suppress an inordinate amount of expression. Id. Justice O'Connor concluded that, by contrast, the lesser degree of variation that would result from application of a national community standard does not necessarily pose a First Amendment problem. Id. at 589, 122 S.Ct. 1700. As a result, Justice O'Connor viewed the adoption of a national standard [as] necessary... for any reasonable regulation of Internet obscenity. Id. at 587, 122 S.Ct. 1700. Justice Breyer, also writing for himself, agreed with Justice O'Connor that [t]o read the statute as adopting the community standards of every locality in the United States would provide the most puritan of communities with a heckler's Internet veto affecting the rest of the Nation. The technical difficulties associated with efforts to confine Internet material to particular geographic areas make the problem particularly serious. Id. at 590, 122 S.Ct. 1700. In order to avoid the serious constitutional issues raised by applying local community standards, Justice Breyer interpreted COPA as applying a national community standard. Id. at 591, 122 S.Ct. 1700. Justice O'Connor's and Justice Breyer's opinions both support Defendants' view that application of local standards in defining Internet obscenity raises a serious constitutional concern that can be alleviated through application of a national community standard. The remaining justices in the majority joined Justice Kennedy's opinion. Justice Kennedy agreed with Justices O'Connor and Breyer that [t]he national variation in community standards constitutes a particular burden on Internet speech. Id. at 597, 122 S.Ct. 1700. However, Justice Kennedy declared that [w]e cannot know whether variation in community standards renders the Act substantially overbroad without first assessing the extent of the speech covered and the variations in community standards with respect to that speech, which the Third Circuit had failed to do. Id. at 597, 122 S.Ct. 1700. Justice Kennedy's opinion also disagreed with Justices Breyer and O'Connor that application of a national community standard would eliminate any potential First Amendment issue because the actual standard applied is bound to vary by community nevertheless. Id. at 596, 122 S.Ct. 1700. The lone dissenter, Justice Stevens would have held that the use of varying local community standards to define speech regulated by COPA rendered the law unconstitutionally overbroad for the reasons outlined by Justices O'Connor and Breyer regardless of how it was construed. Id. at 602-12, 122 S.Ct. 1700. Justice Stevens noted that reliance on a national community standard, even if it could be read into COPA, would not obviate any unconstitutional variances as jurors instructed to apply a national, or adult, standard will reach widely different conclusions throughout the country. Id. at 607 n. 3, 122 S.Ct. 1700. The divergent reasoning of the justices in and out of the majority in Ashcroft leaves us with no explicit holding as to the appropriate geographic definition of contemporary community standards to be applied here. Nonetheless, we are able to derive guidance from the areas of agreement in the various opinions. When a fragmented Court decides a case and no single rationale explaining the result enjoys the assent of five Justices, `the holding of the Court may be viewed as that position taken by those Members who concurred in the judgments on the narrowest grounds.' Marks v. United States, 430 U.S. 188, 193, 97 S.Ct. 990, 51 L.Ed.2d 260 (1977) (quoting Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 169 n. 15, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976) (opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.)). We have previously applied this rule to construe[ ] one Justice's concurring opinion as representing a logical subset of the plurality's. United States v. Williams, 435 F.3d 1148, 1157 n. 9 (9th Cir.2006). Here, Justice Thomas's opinion held broadly that application of either a national community standard or local community standards to regulate Internet speech would pose no constitutional concerns by itself. None of the remaining justices, however, joined that broad holding. Justices O'Connor and Breyer held more narrowly that while application of a national community standard would not or may not create constitutional concern, application of local community standards likely would. Justice O'Connor's and Justice Breyer's opinions, therefore, agreed with a limited aspect of Justice Thomas's holding: that the variance inherent in application of a national community standard would likely not pose constitutional concerns by itself. They did not join his broader conclusion, however, that application of local community standards is similarly unproblematic. In this latter disagreement, Justices O'Connor and Breyer were joined by Justice Kennedy's opinion, as well as Justice Stevens's dissent. Accordingly, five Justices concurring in the judgment, as well as the dissenting Justice, viewed the application of local community standards in defining obscenity on the Internet as generating serious constitutional concerns. At the same time, five justices concurring in the judgment viewed the application of a national community standard as not or likely not posing the same concerns by itself. Accordingly, following Marks, we must view the distinction Justices O'Connor and Breyer made between the constitutional concerns generated by application of a national and local community standards as controlling. Accepting this distinction, in turn, persuades us to join Justices O'Connor and Breyer in holding that a national community standard must be applied in regulating obscene speech on the Internet, including obscenity disseminated via email. `A statute must be construed, if fairly possible, so as to avoid not only the conclusion that it is unconstitutional but also grave doubts upon that score.' Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U.S. 224, 237-238, 118 S.Ct. 1219, 140 L.Ed.2d 350 (1998) (quoting United States v. Jin Fuey Moy, 241 U.S. 394, 401, 36 S.Ct. 658, 60 L.Ed. 1061 (1916)). The constitutional problems identified by the five justices with applying local community standards to regulate Internet obscenity certainly generate grave constitutional doubts as to the use of such standards in applying §§ 1462 and 1465 to Defendants' activities. Furthermore, the Court has never held that a jury may in no case be instructed to apply a national community standard in finding obscenity. Ashcroft, 535 U.S. at 588, 122 S.Ct. 1700 (O'Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment). To avoid[] the need to examine the serious First Amendment problem that would otherwise exist, we construe obscenity as regulated by §§ 1462 and 1465 as defined by reference to a national community standard when disseminated via the Internet. Id. at 590, 122 S.Ct. 1700 (Breyer, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment). [8] The Government argues our proposed holding is foreclosed by our opinion in United States v. Dhingra, 371 F.3d 557 (9th Cir.2004). Dhingra reviewed the constitutionality of 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b), which criminalizes enticement of a minor to engage in criminal sexual activity. Id. at 561. The defendant, who was convicted for enticing a minor through the Internet, raised a First Amendment challenge asserting, in part, that the statute was overbroad because it depended on local criminal laws to define the criminal sexual activity that falls within its ambit. Id. at 563. In rejecting this challenge, we opined: That the persuasion of others for sexual activity occurs over the Internet offers no talismanic protection from the established rule that the burden of complying with the statute rests with the person doing the persuading. The fact that various community standards might apply does not make the statute unconstitutional. Id. at 564 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). However, our analysis in Dhingra is inapplicable here because we found § 2422(b) did not regulate speech. Id. at 563 (Because the statute regulates conduct, not speech, it is inappropriate to bootstrap our First Amendment jurisprudence into the context of criminal sexual contact.). To the extent Dhingra 's language could be broadly interpreted as applying to regulation of Internet speech, it is dictum and hence not controlling. Therefore, Dhingra does not preclude our reading of Ashcroft. In light of our holding, the district court's jury instructions defining obscenity pursuant to Hamling was error. However, this error does not require reversal because the district court's error was far from plain. Error is plain where it is `clear and obvious.' United States v. Recio, 371 F.3d 1093, 1100 (9th Cir.2004) (quoting United States v. Fuchs, 218 F.3d 957, 962 (9th Cir.2000)). Prior to our holding here, the relevant law in this area was highly unsettled with the extremely fractured opinion in Ashcroft providing the best guidance. While our holding today follows directly from a distillation of the various opinions in Ashcroft, our conclusion was far from clear and obvious to the district court. Hence, we conclude that the district committed no reversible error in its §§ 1462 and 1465 jury instructions.