Opinion ID: 1812000
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Evidence of Sale of Comparable Material

Text: One of the questions to which the witness' answer was excluded involved a comparison of the material defendant was charged with selling and material sold in other stores. Error was also assigned to the exclusion of two magazines purchased at another store. The mere fact that other stores were selling material that was as bad as, or worse than, the material sold by defendant would not render defendant's material less obscene. Only a showing that the community accepts or tolerates the materialnot merely a showing that such material is sold, or that it has not thus far been prosecutedwould be material evidence of contemporary community standards of obscenity. Hamling v. United States, 418 U.S. 125, 125-26, 94 S.Ct. 2912, 41 L.Ed.2d 590 (1974); Schauer, The Law of Obscenity 133-34 (1976). However, it is difficult to imagine how community acceptance of material could be shown without first discussing the availability of the material. Therefore, the trial judge should perhaps have allowed the witness to answer the question concerning materials that were available in the community. That evidence of availability does not itself prove acceptance or toleration is an argument addressed to the weight, not the admissibility, of such evidence. Nevertheless, in the context facts of the present trial, the judge's exclusion of availability evidence is not reversible error. Prior to the question to which an objection was sustained, defense counsel was allowed to elicit answers to a nearly identical line of questions. The witness was allowed without objection to testify that in certain stores he had seen materials that were much more sexually explicit, a lot worse, than those his father was charged with selling. Thus, the later question, which differed from the earlier questions only in that it pertained to newsstands rather than stores, might fairly be regarded as cumulative. Moreover, defense counsel made no attempt to show any indicia of community acceptance other than the availability of explicit materials in other stores, although he had an opportunity to develop such evidence. Therefore it is likely, and the trial judge may have inferred, that the cumulative later questions concerning availability were offered for their own sake, and not as part of a larger pattern showing acceptance. At the time the magazines were offered into evidence, defense counsel had asked the witness all the questions he planned to ask about the magazines, and had tendered the witness. All the questions asked about the magazines had to do with their availability in the other store, and their sexual explicitness. There was no other evidence of community acceptance or toleration, which (unlike mere availability) would have been material to the case. Therefore, the judge's refusal to allow their introduction into evidence was within his discretion. See Hamling, cited above, 94 S.Ct. at 2912.