Opinion ID: 1350669
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: State v. Reece

Text: Defendant J-R Distributors, Inc., owned and operated a retail adult book store in Tacoma. Defendant Byron Reece was employed as a manager at the store and defendant Terry Styers was employed as a clerk. Reece was paid an annual salary and Styers was paid by the hour. On July 16, 1985, Pierce County Deputy Sheriff John Solheim purchased a copy of a magazine entitled Chains and Whips. The next day, a superior court judge signed a search warrant authorizing the seizure of any additional copies of the magazine, as well as any other literature explicitly depicting violent or destructive sexual acts, such as rape or torture. The officers promptly executed the warrant seizing two copies of Chains and Whips and more than 200 other magazines and books. The officers arrested Styers who was working on the premises and Reece who arrived during the search. Reece, Styers, and J-R Distributors were charged with the crime of promoting pornography for the sale, exhibition or display of lewd matter, namely, two copies of Chains and Whips. See RCW 9.68.140; 7.48A.010. The trial court denied defendants' motions to dismiss and the case proceeded to trial. To prove that Chains and Whips constituted lewd matter within the meaning of the statute, the State relied solely on the magazine. The magazine contains four articles with accompanying pictures. The articles are entitled: London's Mercenary Masochists, Foot Fetishism, How to be a Bastard!, and The Practice of Bondage. Most of the pictures mainly depict naked or scantily clad women being whipped, strangled, bound in a painful position, or threatened with a knife or other deadly object. In a few of the pictures, the women appear to have welts and blood smears. The magazine contains no depictions of masturbation, excretory functions, closely exposed genitals, or ultimate sex acts. The trial court instructed the jury that in order to convict the defendants of promoting pornography, it must find that Chains and Whips was lewd matter, that the defendants sold, exhibited or displayed that matter for profit-making purposes, and that they did so with knowledge. The jury found all three defendants guilty as charged.