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

Heading: Pre-Redrup Decisions

Text: Ten years ago, the Supreme Court reversed the New York Court of Appeals in Kingsley International Pictures Corp. v. Regents, 360 U.S. 684, 79 S.Ct. 1362, 3 L.Ed.2d 1512, holding that the state could not deny a license to show the motion picture Lady Chatterley's Lover merely because the picture represented that adultery under certain circumstances may be proper behavior. Thereafter, in Manual Enterprises, Inc. v. Day, 370 U.S. 478, 82 S.Ct. 1432, 8 L.Ed.2d 639, the court had occasion to pass on the application of a Federal statute prohibiting shipment of obscene material through the mail. Some of its observations foreshadowed recent decisions which I believe govern. The court said the magazines were not so offensive on their face as to affront current community standards of decency, which it equated with patent offensiveness or indecency, citing as follows A. L. I., Model Penal Code, Proposed Official Draft (May 4, 1962) § 251.4(1), which it had approved in Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 77 S.Ct. 1304, 1 L.Ed.2d 1498: Material is obscene if, considered as a whole, its predominant appeal is to prurient interest    and if in addition it goes substantially beyond customary limits of candor in describing or representing such matters. (Italics supplied.) Under the Federal statute, the court said, there must be proof of both patent offensiveness and prurient appeal before the material may be found obscene. It went on to indicate that the test was a national standard of decency. In addition, the court made reference to, but did not decide, whether Roth v. United States, supra , and its other decisions were aimed only at hard-core pornography and concluded by noting (370 U.S. 490, 82 S.Ct. 1438, 8 L.Ed. 2d 648):    [T]he most that can be said of [the magazines] is that they are dismally unpleasant, uncouth, and tawdry. But this is not enough to make them `obscene.' The rules governing obscenity were expanded in Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 84 S.Ct.1676, 12 L.Ed.2d 793. There the state court held a French moving picture to be obscene, and the Supreme Court reversed. In so doing, it rejected the argument that the question of obscenity is a purely factual judgment on which a jury's verdict is all but conclusive. Obscenity was said to be a matter of constitutional law which has to be decided by a court. The majority emphasized that obscenity is excluded from the constitutional protection only because it is `utterly' without redeeming social importance. Again, the court cited and approved A. L. I., Model Penal Code, in emphasizing the necessity for a finding that the material goes substantially beyond customary limits of candor in describing or representing such matters. 378 U.S. 191, 84 S.Ct. 1680, 12 L.Ed. 2d 800. It applied to a state law the rule that contemporary community standards means a national community and not a local community. In concluding, the court suggested (378 U.S. 195, 84 S.Ct. 1682, 12 L.Ed.2d 802):    State and local authorities might well consider whether their objectives in this area would be better served by laws aimed specifically at preventing distribution of objectionable material to children, rather than at totally prohibiting its dissemination. On the same date, the Supreme Court reversed a Florida decision which held Tropic of Cancer obscene. Grove Press, Inc. v. Gerstein, 378 U.S. 577, 84 S.Ct. 1909, 12 L.Ed.2d 1035, reversing Grove Press, Inc. v. State ex rel. Gerstein (Fla. App.) 156 So.2d 537. In 1966, the court attempted to summarize and clarify its previous decisions in A Book Named John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [Fanny Hill] v. Attorney General, 383 U.S. 413, 418, 86 S. Ct. 975, 977, 16 L.Ed.2d 1, 5. There the court said that under its Roth definition of obscenity    three elements must coalesce: it must be established that (a) the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to a prurient interest in sex; (b) the material is patently offensive because it affronts contemporary community standards relating to the description or representation of sexual matters; and (c) the material is utterly without redeeming social value. The court held that the Massachusetts court had erred in holding that a book need not be unqualifiedly worthless before it can be deemed obscene. The correct rule was held to be (383 U.S. 419, 86 S.Ct. 978, 16 L.Ed.2d 6):    A book cannot be proscribed unless it is found to be utterly without redeeming social value. This is so even though the book is found to possess the requisite prurient appeal and to be patently offensive. A new note was introduced in the test of obscenity by the court's emphasis on the circumstances of production, sale, and publicity (383 U.S. 420, 86 S.Ct. 978, 16 L. Ed.2d 7):    Evidence that the book was commercially exploited for the sake of prurient appeal, to the exclusion of all other values, might justify the conclusion that the book was utterly without redeeming social importance.    All possible uses of the book must therefore be considered, and the mere risk that the book might be exploited by panderers because it so pervasively treats sexual matters cannot alter the fact    that the book will have redeeming social importance   . On the same date, the court decided Ginzburg v. United States, 383 U.S. 463, 86 S. Ct. 942, 16 L.Ed.2d 31. In Ginzburg, the court upheld a conviction under the Federal obscenity laws because of the evidence of pandering to which it had made reference in the Fanny Hill case. The court said that circumstances of presentation and dissemination of material claimed to be obscene were relevant to the issue of social importance. The court concluded (383 U.S. 475, 86 S.Ct. 950, 16 L.Ed.2d 41):    Where an exploitation of interests in titillation by pornography is shown with respect to material lending itself to such exploitation through pervasive treatment or description of sexual matters, such evidence may support the determination that the material is obscene even though in other contexts the material would escape such condemnation. In dissenting, Mr. Justice Stewart, without attempting to define hard-core pornography, articulated his concept with the following illustration (383 U.S. 499, note 3, 86 S.Ct. 957, note 3, 16 L.Ed.2d 54, note 3):    Such materials include photographs, both still and motion picture, with no pretense of artistic value, graphically depicting acts of sexual intercourse, including various acts of sodomy and sadism, and sometimes involving several participants in scenes of orgy-like character. They also include strips of drawings in comic-book format grossly depicting similar activities in an exaggerated fashion. There are, in addition, pamphlets and booklets, sometimes with photographic illustrations, verbally describing such activities in a bizarre manner with no attempt whatsoever to afford portrayals of character or situation and with no pretense to literary value. All of this material    cannot conceivably be characterized as embodying communication of ideas or artistic values inviolate under the First Amendment   . In a companion case, Mishkin v. New York, 383 U.S. 502, 86 S.Ct. 958, 16 L. Ed.2d 56, a New York conviction for hiring others to produce obscene books and possessing them with the intent to sell them was upheld. The material depicted heterosexual and homosexual relations as well as sado-masochism and fetishism. Again, Mr. Justice Stewart dissented, stating (383 U.S. 518, 86 S.Ct. 969, 16 L.Ed.2d 67):    However tawdry those books may be, they are not hard-core pornography, and their publication is, therefore, protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.