Opinion ID: 1876720
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: ex post facto applies

Text: The new U.S. Supreme Court cases are at once both amplifying and more restrictive: they are expansive in 1) expressing the principle of authoritative construction [10] to amplify the statutory language in order to meet whatever test is applicable on the date of the offense in question, and 2) in laying down a prospective new test which is less restrictive than Roth -Memoirs; but these new holdings also more severely limit the state in its permissible statutory regulation of obscenity to so-called hardcore materials of sexual acts expressly defined either in the statute or by authoritative construction thereof. On the matter of standards of obscenity, the U.S. Supreme Court has now afforded a sensible test and guidelines in Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 93 S.Ct. 2607, 37 L.Ed.2d 419 (1973), and Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U.S. 49, 93 S.Ct. 2628, 37 L.Ed.2d 446 (1973), decided on June 21, 1973. The new test will no doubt prove more effective in future infractions of § 847.011 and of the new Fla. Stat. Ch. 73-120. We cannot, in our view, however, by reason of ex post facto principles apply new standards in the now-judicially-approved new test of obscenity [11] to earlier offenses in determining the sufficiency of the statutory language to warn the average person of common intelligence as to what constitutes the prohibited offense. This is particularly true of (c) of the test in Miller as to literary, etc. value. It may or may not be true of (a) and (b) in view of our statutory language and its construction as it may have been published as notice to an offender on the date of the offense in question. Sub judice the test set forth in these latest U.S. judicial holdings with respect to c (literary value) as to what now constitutes obscenity was not available on May 5, 1971, as amplification of the notice to appellant of the proscribed conduct; such a modification of the old test in the new holdings cannot now be echoed to the date of the earlier offense. [12] The old test (Memoirs v. Mass., 383 U.S. 413, 419, 86 S.Ct. 975, 978, 16 L.Ed.2d 1 (1966)) that the allegedly obscene matter be utterly without redeeming social value, must apply in such instance, for such was the test upon which defendant was on notice on the date (May 5, 1971) of the alleged violation. Said former test, then applicable, was correctly applied, however, in the trial below. Thus there was no error. We hold that the test of what constitutes obscenity for purposes of notice of the proscribed conduct, and the test to be utilized at trial, is that which prevailed under the applicable statute as amplified by authoritative construction published at the time of the offense. [13]