Court Opinion

ID: 9523398
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:41:36.078418+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:05:16.257948
License: Public Domain

Wilkins, J.
The corporate defendant and the individual defendant were indicted under G. L. c. 272, § 28A, for knowingly having in their possession on August 30,1973, for the purpose of exhibition, an “obscene, indecent and impure motion picture film entitled ‘The Devil In Miss Jones.’ ” The corporate defendant was also indicted under G. L. c. 272, § 32, for knowingly showing “a lewd, obscene, *180indecent, immoral and impure show and entertainment by presenting and exhibiting a motion picture film entitled ‘The Devil In Miss Jones.’ ” The judge charged the jury on the basis of the constitutional standard set forth in Miller v. California, 413 U. S. 15 (1973). The defendants were found guilty on each indictment. Each defendant was fined $5,000 on the § 28A indictments and the individual defendant was sentenced to two and one-half years in the house of correction. The indictment under G. L. c. 272, § 32, was filed. The cases are before us on the defendants’ appeals under G. L. c. 278, §§ 33A-33G.
Although the defendants have argued numerous assignments of error, we need not deal with most of them. Our decision in Commonwealth v. Horton, ante, 164, decided this day, indicates that G. L. c. 272, § 28A, is unconstitutionally vague under the standard of the Miller case. The verdict under G. L. c. 272, § 32, may not stand because § 32 is subject to the same constitutional infirmities as is § 28A. Our decisions construing § 32 have not given specificity to the general prohibition of § 32. We have suggested that the standard of § 32 is the same as that of § 28A for the purpose of determining obscenity (Commonwealth v. Moniz, 338 Mass. 442 [1959]), and have in effect given to § 32 a scope of application as broad as has been constitutionally permissible under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. See P. B. I. C. Inc. v. District Atty. of Suffolk County, 357 Mass. 770 (1970). Section 32, therefore, fails to meet the standard of specificity required by the Miller decision, and for the same reasons expressed in our decision in the Horton case, ante, 164, we decline to reinterpret § 32 to provide judicially the description of specific sexual conduct which must exist to satisfy First Amendment requirements as now defined.

Judgments reversed and verdicts set aside.