Opinion ID: 1729502
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: seizure proper

Text: On the evening of February 12, 1970, a 15-year-old minor was admitted to the showing of the double feature film in question [5] without any inquiry being made as to his age or any request for identification; he had been supplied the admission price in advance by an investigator for the Sheriff's Department, who followed the boy into the drive-in in a separate car and viewed the films. On February 14, the appellant theatre operator was arrested for violation of Fla. Stat. § 847.013, F.S.A., and prints of the films in question were taken for use as evidence, pursuant to a warrant. These prints were directly involved in the perpetration of the offense and were material evidence. No effort was made to prevent the theatre operator from showing other prints of the same films. The injunctive provisions of the statute are not involved in this case. In Heller v. New York, 413 U.S. 483, 93 S.Ct. 2789, 37 L.Ed.2d 745, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the seizure of a film in similar circumstances. In that case, a judge had issued a search warrant after personally viewing the offending films, without notice to the theatre operator or a prior adversary hearing. In the course of upholding the seizure of the film as evidence in that case, the Supreme Court noted that no claim had been been made that the seizure prevented exhibition of the movie by use of another copy, and stated that there was no absolute right to a prior adversary hearing applicable to all cases where allegedly obscene material is seized. In particular, there is no such absolute right where allegedly obscene material is seized, pursuant to a warrant, to preserve the material as evidence in a criminal prosecution. 413 U.S. at 485, 93 S.Ct. at 2792, 37 L.Ed.2d at 751. The court in that case observed that no final restraint was imposed, but that only a copy of the film had been temporarily detained, so as to preserve it as evidence. If such a seizure is pursuant to a warrant issued after a determination of probable cause by a neutral magistrate, and, following the seizure, a prompt judicial determination of the obscenity issue in an adversary proceeding is available at the request of any interested party, the seizure is constitutionally permissible. 413 U.S. at 487, 93 S.Ct. at 2795, 37 L.Ed.2d at 754. In Roaden v. Kentucky, 413 U.S. 496, 93 S.Ct. 2796, 37 L.Ed.2d 757, the Supreme Court struck down as unreasonable the seizure of an allegedly obscene film where the seizure was based solely on the local sheriff's personal observation of the film and was made without any warrant or prior judicial determination of obscenity, despite the fact that only one copy of the film was seized, and the further fact that the seizure was for purposes of preserving the film as evidence. In the instant case, a warrant had been issued by a judge following an inquiry into the alleged obscenity of the films in question, although the judge in this case had not, as had the judge in Heller , personally viewed the offending films. The material was seized pursuant to a warrant and for the purposes of preserving the material as evidence in a criminal prosecution, and there was no showing that the temporary detention of the film prevented the theater operator from obtaining and showing another copy of the same print. Thus, in accordance with Heller , we find that the seizure in the instant case was proper.