Opinion ID: 1099410
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Failure to Use the Legal Definition of Obscenity

Text: In a separate argument, Schmitt challenges section 827.071 on grounds that it fails to define child exploitation offenses in the same terms the Constitution mandates for obscenity. We do not believe this to be error in this instance. The law plainly allows a lesser tolerance for depictions of the sexual exploitation of children. Here as in Osborne, the state's primary purpose is to destroy the market for such material and thus eliminate the economic incentive for the exploitation itself. Indeed, the exploitation of children for sexual purposes involves a level of heinousness of the highest magnitude. Even if obscenity analysis is applicable in this context, we thus believe that a conviction for possessing depictions rendered unlawful under section 827.071 as construed in this opinion always would meet the test for obscenity developed in Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 24, 93 S.Ct. 2607, 2615, 37 L.Ed.2d 419 (1973). There, the Court stated the following method of proving obscenity: (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 state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. Id. (citations omitted). The conduct described in section 827.071, as construed above, inherently involves conduct that appeals to prurient interest, and inherently depicts patently offensive sexual conduct as that term is specifically defined in Florida law. Our opinion today eliminates the possibility that depictions of innocent conduct might be encompassed within this definition. Moreover, we can conceive of no serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific interests that would ever justify the sexual or sadomasochistic exploitation of children. By convicting under section 827.071 as construed here, a fact finder logically and necessarily concludes that all the elements of the Miller test have been satisfied. Accordingly, Schmitt's argument on this question must fail.