Court Opinion

ID: 9430438
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:29:44.521029+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:24.527833
License: Public Domain

Justice Marshall,
with whom, Justice Brennan and Justice Stevens join, dissenting.
Under New York law, a film depicting specified sexual acts in a patently offensive manner is obscene if “the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that considered as a whole, its predominant appeal is to the prurient interest in sex,” and if “considered as a whole, it lacks serious literary, artistic, political, and scientific value.” N. Y. Penal Law §§235.00(l)(a), (c) (McKinney 1980). The question before this Court is whether three New York state courts erred in holding that the affidavits at issue in this case failed to establish probable cause that those standards were met.1 The determination of what the standards of *885§235.00(1) mean and how they should be applied in individual cases, of course, is in the first instance a matter of state law and the rightful province of the state courts. While the majority describes it as “clear beyond peradventure,” ante, at 876, that the affidavits set out the requisite probable cause, I do not find that result “clear” at all, and I would not overturn the state courts’ contrary judgment.
I — I
The affidavits at issue in this case were first found inadequate at a suppression hearing in the Depew Justice Court. The court, per Justice Wick, noted that the issuing Magistrate had apparently not himself viewed the films, and that the retired state trooper who compiled the affidavits had “obviously paid no attention to contemporary community standards” and “made no further determination if the presentations had any literary, artistic, political or scientific value.” App. to Pet. for Cert. A-37. Without stating clearly the exact basis of its decision, the court noted that “[t]he material contained [in the films] may be of the type proscribed by Section 235.05 of the Penal Law but equally, it may be . . . ‘coarse, puerile, offensive and distasteful (and still not) obscene under the law or proscribable.’ ” Id., at A-38, quoting People v. Stabile, 58 Misc. 2d 905, 296 N. Y. S. 2d 815 (N. Y. C. Crim. Ct. 1969). The court'granted respondents’ suppression motion.
The Erie County Court affirmed. Justice LaMendola noted the absence of a transcript of the proceedings, if any, before the issuing Magistrate, and declared it within the lower court’s discretion to hold that “under New York law, the issuing magistrate had failed to make an adequate finding of probable cause . . . because he relied solely on the affidavits of the police officers without any further investigation or viewing of the materials to be confiscated.” App. to Pet. *886for Cert. A-33. Justice LaMendola’s reference to “further investigation or viewing” makes it plain that she did not regard the issuing Magistrate’s viewing of the film as an invariable requisite to issuance of a warrant. The affidavits in this case, however, unsupported by further investigation, provided insufficient basis for a warrant authorization.
The New York Court of Appeals affirmed. 65 N. Y. 2d 566, 483 N. E. 2d 1120 (1985). The court recognized that “the task of the issuing magistrate was not to decide guilt or innocence but to determine in a preliminary way from the information submitted and available to him whether there was probable cause to believe that the material to be seized was obscene within the tripartite definition of the statute.” Id., at 570, 483 N. E. 2d, at 1123. Applying that standard, it held the affidavits insufficient.
Near the beginning of its opinion, the New York court reiterated this Court’s recent direction that the Fourth Amendment be applied with “‘scrupulous exactitude’” in cases of searches for and seizures of presumptively protected materials, Maryland v. Macon, 472 U. S. 463, 468 (1985); see also Stanford v. Texas, 379 U. S. 476 (1965), and noted a “higher standard” for warrant determinations when books and films are seized, citing Roaden v. Kentucky, 413 U. S. 496 (1973). The New York court did not go on, however, to apply any extraordinary standard of scrutiny to the determination of probable cause. Rather, its holding was a simple one: “There must be enough information before [the issuing magistrate] in one form or other ... to enable him to judge the obscenity of the film, not of isolated scenes from it.” 65 N. Y. 2d, at 571, 483 N. E. 2d, at 1124. The affidavits, the court explained, merely cataloged offensive sex acts depicted in the films. Such catalogs say nothing about the “predominant appeal” of a film, its impact “considered as a whole,” or its overall literary or artistic value. “Undoubtedly, similar lists could readily be compiled by excerpting descriptions of scenes from books and movies having recog*887nized merit. Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Clockwork Orange’ and Federico Fellini’s ‘Satyricon’ come quickly to mind.” Ibid. Because obscenity law requires examination of the films as a whole, the court held, probable cause cannot be inferred from the description of a few excerpted scenes. Id., at 572, 483 N. E. 2d, at 1124.
II
Taken in the abstract, the New York court’s reasoning is unassailable. A mere fisting of sex acts depicted in a film, or a description of excerpted scenes, says little about the predominant effect of the film considered as a whole. It says nothing about whether the film, considered as a whole, has any artistic value. And it says nothing about how the film should be regarded in fight of contemporary community standards. Such a description, then, cannot establish even probable cause to believe that the film is obscene. “[S]ex and obscenity are not synonomous.” Roth v. United States, 354 U. S. 476, 487 (1957).2 A magistrate armed only with such a description cannot “ ‘focus searchingly on the question of obscenity,”’ as the majority, ante, at 874, concedes he is obligated to do.
The majority’s rejection of the New York court’s reasoning appears to derive from a largely unarticulated feeling that that reasoning is inappropriately applied in the present case. As a result, notwithstanding the sweeping legal principles set out in the majority’s opinion, the decision of this case ultimately rests on the mundane application of clear law to *888undisputed facts. The majority suggests that the New York court wrongly applied its law because the affidavits described more than excerpted scenes: they allowed the Magistrate to discern the “‘general theme and serious value’” of the films, and established that sex acts “ ‘pervaded’ ” each film. Ante, at 877.
The problem with the majority’s approach is that it is unsupported in the texts of the affidavits. Although a boilerplate sentence in each affidavit invokes the “content” of the films, and two of the affidavits conclusorily assert that certain sex acts are depicted “throughout” the film, the affidavits do not attempt to describe every scene in the films or even most of the scenes. Rather, the scenes described in the affidavits are simply those the author chose to describe. While descriptions of sex acts pervade the affidavits, it is hardly clear that depictions of sex acts pervade the films. Similarly, while the “general tone” of the affidavits is clear, we have little basis for a conclusion about the “general tone” of the films.
The affidavits do not purport to be exhaustive. They can be meaningful in considering the artistic value of the films, taken as a whole, or the films’ predominant appeal, only if one assumes that everything, or almost everything, worth noting in the films was incorporated into the affidavits. Nothing in the affidavits, however, justifies that assumption. The affidavits are precisely what the New York Court of Appeals condemned: mere listings of selected scenes from the films that involved depictions of sex. The films described could as well be “Last Tango in Paris.”
The majority’s decision upholding a warrant authorization uninformed by any information relating to crucial elements of the definition of obscenity is especially incongruous because the majority overrules the institution most closely attuned to the content of those elements: the New York courts. The New York courts are well suited to decide whether, on the basis of “contemporary community standards,” the informa*889tion supporting a warrant authorization allows the magistrate to focus searchingly on the question of obscenity, and to find probable cause that given material is obscene. The New York courts have unanimously held in this case that the affidavits were insufficient to achieve that end. The majority’s eagerness to reverse that fact-bound determination in order to expedite an obscenity prosecution is inappropriate and reflects a dubious notion of this Court’s institutional role. Cf. California v. Carney, 471 U. S. 386, 395 (1985) (Stevens, J., dissenting).
I dissent.

 The New York Court of Appeals held that the third branch of the statute, providing that a film, to be obscene, must depict specified sexual acts “in a patently offensive manner, actual or simulated,” §235.00(l)(b), *885was satisfied by the descriptions in the affidavits in this case. 65 N. Y. 2d 566, 570, n. 1, 483 N. E. 2d 1120, 1123, n. 1 (1985).

 Obscene material, considered as a whole, must not only be without serious literary or other merit, but it must, applying contemporary community standards, also appeal predominantly to a “shameful or morbid” interest in sex. See Brackett v. Spokane Arcades, Inc., 472 U. S. 491 (1985). Indeed, three of the very films described by the affidavits in this ease have been declared outside the constitutional boundaries of obscenity. See United States v. Various Articles of Obscene Merchandise, 709 F. 2d 132 (CA2 1983) (“Deep Throat,” “Debbie Does Dallas,” and “Little Girls Blue” not obscene, applying community standards of Southern District of New York).