Opinion ID: 2017210
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Redrup Tests Applied by Other Courts

Text: A careful reading of the cases cited leads me to the inescapable conclusion that the books here for consideration cannot be held criminally obscene unless the state has proved beyond a reasonable doubt one or more of the significant elements to which the court made reference in Redrup. In other words, the test seems to be whether or not the sale or distribution was directed at juveniles; whether it was an obtrusive assault on individual privacy; and whether there was evidence of pandering. My views in this regard are fortified, I submit, by a number of other decisions which have sought to apply the Redrup rule. The United States Court of Appeals in Grant v. United States (9 Cir.) 380 F.2d 748, reversed a conviction for using the mails to sell what it described as rotten books, obsessed with sex, which were at best junk. The court held that they were of the same quality as those dealt with in the Redrup case. A similar result was reached in People v. Stabile, 58 Misc. 2d 905, 296 N.Y.S.2d 815, where the Criminal Court of New York City felt obliged to dismiss criminal complaints in reliance on Redrup although the court noted that the material before it was coarse, puerile, offensive and distasteful. 58 Misc.2d 912, 296 N.Y.S.2d 815, 824. I subscribe to the assessment made by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in Commonwealth v. Dell Publications, Inc., 427 Pa. 189, 210, 233 A.2d 840, 852. There, the court observed that Redrup may yet prove to be the most significant of the obscenity opinions and seems to signify the Supreme Court's final abandonment of its futile search for a definition of obscenity. The court observed that Redrup approached the problem by reference to the circumstances under which publication of the material might be constitutionally restricted. The court then set forth the three elements described in Redrup and found none of them present. The lower court's finding that the book Candy was obscene was reversed. Three other jurisdictions have laid similar stress on Redrup: The Federal District Court for Maryland in United States v. 4,400 Copies of Magazines, 276 F.Supp. 902; the Ohio Court of Common Pleas in State v. J. L. Marshall News Co., 13 Ohio Misc. 60, 232 N.E.2d 435; and the Michigan Court of Appeals in Olsen, Wayne County Prosecutor v. Doerfler, 14 Mich.App. 428, 463, 165 N.W.2d 648, 664. [4] The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in an opinion written by Judge Donald Lay, Luros v. United States, 389 F.2d 200, has also called attention to the areas in which the court in Redrup said prosecutions might succeed. That court, too, felt that Redrup indicated an attitude to ban only hard-core pornography. Although the material in the Luros case was described as just plain trash, there was said to be insufficient evidence of pandering to affirm a conviction. Judge Lay concluded his opinion by adopting what I consider the proper approach to this difficult area of the law (389 F.2d 206): [5] Many well-intentioned citizens become disgusted or offended with the freedom by which purveyors of trash place their publications in the mail. But within the juridical balance is the basic concern over governmental interference into free channels of expression. It is far better there be a tight rein on authoritarian suppression, notwithstanding a conflict with some individuals' tastes or customary limits of candor, than that we live in a stifled community of self-censorship where men must feel apprehension over expression of an unpopular idea or theme. Still within our human possession is the free will to make an independent choice of values and to teach our children to do the same. Paternalistic censorship by government must continue to limit that choice only in the most extreme of circumstances. Thus we view the general reluctance of the law to go further in this area.