Court Opinion

ID: 9523411
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:41:44.310821+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:05:22.008476
License: Public Domain

Hennessey, J.
(concurring). I concur as to both result and reasoning with the opinion of the court as expressed by Justice Wilkins. The United States Supreme Court, in the Miller case, ruled that the Constitution requires specificity in an obscenity statute. More particularly, the relevant sexual conduct must be specifically defined either in the wording of the statute or by authoritative judicial construction of the statute. Clearly G. L. c. 272, § 28A, contains no such specifics in its wording. Nor have we authoritatively construed the statute. The few Supreme Judicial Court cases relied on in the dissent in Commonwealth v. Capri Enterprises, Inc., post, 179 , contain only cursory, and at best ambiguous, reference to proof under the statute. Just as important, until the Miller case established a rule of community standards, everything that we said about our *174statute had to be read in the context of national standards of First Amendment protection. These national standards in turn have been so vaguely defined as to foreclose any authoritative construction of a local obscenity statute.
Every appeal deserves our most careful consideration, but there is an added and special importance in our reaching the correct results in this decision, the Capri case, supra, and Essex Theatre Corp. v. Police Commr. of Boston, post, 183. For about seventeen years confusion has reigned as to the validity and effectiveness of obscenity statutes. Decisions of the United States Supreme Court virtually halted prosecutions under such statutes. Upholding the statute here through what could only be impermissible and excessive straining on our part might add months or years of unnecessary uncertainty and confusion to the long hiatus that has already occurred. Eventually and almost certainly, in my opinion, review of these cases or other relevant cases in the Federal courts would result in a determination of unconstitutionality of the statute. See Literature, Inc. v. Quinn, 482 F. 2d 372 (1st Cir. 1973).
By our ruling today, the Legislature is made aware that the statute, G. L. c. 272, § 28A, is no longer viable. Simultaneously, the Legislature is apprised that, in the Miller case, for the first time since the free speech-obscenity dialogue began in earnest, guidelines for a constitutionally acceptable objective standard for obscenity statutes have been established by the United States Supreme Court. Moreover, such statutes may now be construed by community, rather than national, standards.
Thus the Legislature may now at its option, without further delay or confusion, determine whether the Commonwealth should or should not have a new obscenity statute or statutes. If it decides that question affirmatively, it alone has the privilege of defining, within constitutional limits, the conduct which shall be proscribed. It is not for this court to make those decisions.
Nevertheless, if the reasoning of the three dissenting Justices of this court in the Capri case, supra, were to prevail, it would in effect require that we should make those *175legislative determinations. I respectfully suggest that these Justices are applying the same type of subjective individual judgments that some or all of the Justices of the United States Supreme Court have applied in the last two decades of judicial confusion in this area of the law. Bickel, The Supreme Court and the Idea of Progress, 50-58 (1970). The fact that an “exhibitor” or “any competent adult,” as referred to in the dissenting opinion in the Capri case, may conclude that the subject matter is obscene, in the sense that it is tasteless or degrading, does not necessarily support a conclusion that those persons are or should be aware that the same matter is legally obscene within the meaning of any statute. The legal concept has been complicated by a series of United States Supreme Court decisions. These raised a mythical and mystifying national standard of First Amendment protection. They also provided First Amendment protection on the basis of social worth that was all but imperceptible in some cases. For example, in “John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure” v. Attorney Gen. of Mass. 383 U. S. 413 (1966), the court held that “Memoirs” was protected by the First Amendment, although Mr. Justice Clark summarized its total vulgarity (383 U. S. at 445-446) in a list that, for length and strength, is at least a match for the similar synopsis on which the dissent relies in the Capri case, supra.
In a long series of cases the Supreme Court has invariably, with two inexplicable exceptions,1 reversed all judgments based on findings of obscenity in cases which apparently involved all types of alleged pornography.2 The *176phrase “hard-core pornography,” upon which the dissenters apparently rely in their reasoning, is little more than a cliché which has not been defined in any case, nor has it apparently been a premise for the affirmation of even one judgment of guilt. Even the three decisions of the Supreme Judicial Court which are relied on in the dissent in the Capri case, supra, as authoritative constructions of the statute, were all reversals of convictions. Commonwealth v. Palladino, 358 Mass. 28 (1970). Commonwealth v. Donahue, 358 Mass. 803 (1970). Commonwealth v. Bitsocos, 361 Mass. 859 (1972).
We should take notice of abundant empirical evidence that the community has tolerated increasingly permissive displays of pornographic literature and X-rated movies. Ultimate sexual acts have been depicted in scores of moving pictures and regularly shown in theatres in all of the urban communities, and many of the suburbs and rural areas, in the Commonwealth. From one such motion picture the male star received an Academy Award nomination for a performance which included repeated and explicit scenes of coitus with the female costar. Photographs of these actors, in sexual congress, also appeared in our national news magazines of widest distribution. It is not surprising if, in all these circumstances, some police and prosecutors, or the defendants in these cases before us, concluded that the national standard superimposed on our local law had reached a state of almost unlimited permissiveness. These developments of the most recent several years have not been refuted by any firm language of this court or the United States Supreme Court. Thus I cannot conclude that we have authoritatively construed our statute in the manner demanded by the Miller case.
Finally, I offer one collateral thought. Justice Kaplan’s concurring opinion expresses the idea that the holdings of the Miller case and related recent cases are “probably transient.” I share his suspicion. In a very few years the Supreme Court has gone from the Roth-Memoirs standard all the way to the Miller standard. In between there was a temporary reversal of direction in the Ginzburg and Mish-*177kin cases, supra. Similarly, certain crucial rules relating to the right to counsel as established in United States v. Wade, 388 U. S. 218 (1967), and Gilbert v. California, 388 U. S. 263 (1967), were all but vacated by the severe limitations of Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U. S. 682 (1972), just five years later.3 Likewise, the relative certainty concerning search and seizures related to automobiles, as established by Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U. S. 42 (1970), was cast into confusion by Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443 (1971), the very next year. See Commonwealth v. Haefeli, 361 Mass. 271 (1972). Certainly constitutional interpretation must respond to social change, but this duty does not explain speedy overruling of new doctrines. These turnarounds are followed by serious consequences to many people in every community. Especially in the area of constitutional-criminal law all concerned are entitled to a substantial measure of stability and predictability.
Kaplan, J.
(concurring). The latest, but probably transient, view of a majority of the Supreme Court of the United States seems to demand of a State statute on criminal “obscenity” that it should comprise specifics, thus reverting to the style of the motion picture production code sponsored by the late Will H. Hays.1I agree that the tired words of our statute do not have the magical property of instantly conforming their meaning to the hypothesized statute, and therefore I join in the court’s opinion.
Persons with a reflective or experimental turn of mind might welcome an opportunity to observe how New England communities would carry on over a period of time without the assistance of suppressive law. The prospect is remote. The court’s opinion is likely to be understood as an urgent invitation to our legislators to draft and pass the indicated statute. Therefore I think I should say that such *178an enactment would present for independent consideration a question of constitutionality. For the time being the doubt would not arise from the Constitution of the United States, for in that respect all are bound by the latest decisions of the Supreme Court; rather it would arise from the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights. In applying that fundamental document, one would have to consider whether to align oneself with those dissenting Justices of the Supreme Court who believe a State is without power to intrude on the choice of an adult who knowingly and willingly seeks out a pornographic work. According to their conception, a pornographic communication is still a communication which the free press guaranty protects at least to the extent mentioned; in that regard it does not differ from other messages that many would consider profoundly anti-social, for example, the writings of Henry George on the single tax.
If this view should prevail, our courts would be relieved of the anomalous duty of serving as literary and artistic constables, and the Commonwealth would be spared the phenomenon of judges (very few of them women) trying as official censors to assess the incitive or emetic qualities of movies or books that a considerable fraction of the popu-lotion, pursuing their own tastes, desire to see or read. The reallocation of judicial resources to tasks that judges are better schooled to handle might be thought to be in itself a distinct gain.

 Ginzburg v. United States, 383 U. S. 463 (1966). Mishkin v. New York, 383 U. S. 502 (1966).

 Times Film Corp. v. Chicago, 355 U. S. 35 (1957). Mounce v. United States, 355 U. S. 180 (1957). One, Inc. v. Olesen, 355 U. S. 371 (1958). Sunshine Book Co. v. Summerfield, 355 U. S. 372 (1958). Kingsley Intl. Pictures Corp. v. Regents of the Univ. of the State of N. Y. 360 U. S. 684 (1959). Smith v. California, 361 U. S. 147 (1959). Marcus v. Search Warrant of Property at 104 East Tenth St., Kansas City, Mo. 367 U. S. 717 (1961). Manual Enterprises, Inc. v. Day, 370 U. S. 478 (1962). Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U. S. 184 (1964). A Quantity of Copies of Books v. Kansas, 378 U. S. 205 (1964). Tralins v. Gerstein, 378 U. S. 576 (1964). Grove Press, Inc. v. Gerstein, 378 U. S. 577 (1964). Trans-Lux Distrib. Corp. v. Board of Regents of the Univ. of N. Y. 380 U. S. 259 (1965). Redrup v. New York, 386 U. S. 767 (1967). Kois v. Wisconsin, 408 U. S. 229 (1972).

 1 recognize that the plurality in the Kirby case implied that it was merely clarifying what had always been the law. Nevertheless, I suggest that most trial judges, after the Wade case and prior to the Kirby case, were applying the rule that the suspect was entitled to assistance of counsel at all pre-trial identification procedures, before or after complaint or indictment.

 See Inglis, Freedom of the Movies, 205-219 (1947).