Court Opinion

ID: 9687902
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:52:50.900433+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:32.695746
License: Public Domain

Robert W. Hansen, J.
(concurring). Is a jury to apply a statewide or local community standard in applying the “average person” test as to appeal to prurient interest in obscenity cases? For the answer we look to Miller v. California,1 the first United States Supreme Court case since 1957 in which a majority of that court has agreed on the test to be used in determining what is *581obscene.2 The writer agrees with the court majority in this case that Miller permits the use of a statewide community standard. In Miller, the high court upheld a pornography conviction in a case where the trial judge instructed the jury on “statewide” standards.3 However, the writer reads Miller as permitting the use of either a statewide standard or, alternatively, local community standards. In Miller, in text and footnotes, the majority opinion refers to “community standards” a dozen times,4 mentions statewide standards twice.5 If the high court had intended to mandate use of a statewide standard, it obviously could, certainly should, and, in the writer’s opinion, certainly would have specified that a statewide, not a local, community standard was to be applied.
Moreover, the writer sees the rationale and reasoning of Miller as strongly suggesting the use of local community standards in the application of the “average person” test made part of its threefold formula for determining obscenity.6 For three reasons, all derived from Miller, the writer would uphold the conviction in this *582ease but would adopt for the future the local community from which the jury is drawn as the geographical area whose average person’s standards are to be applied. The three reasons are as follows:
(1) The prerequisite consensus among average persons in varied and various communities in this state as to what offends community standards is lacking. To locate a statewide consensus or standard appears to the writer to be as difficult and unrewarding an endeavor as has been the effort to locate and apply a nationwide standard. In Miller, the high court stated that “. . . our nation is simply too big and too diverse for this Court to reasonably expect that such standards could be articulated for all 50 States in a single formulation, even assuming the prerequisite consensus exists. ...” 7 Individual states are not as big as the nation, but they can be as diverse. Who would deny that the average person, applying community standards in a Rice Lake or Lake Mills, might well find prurient and patently offensive materials and performances tolerated and found tolerable in a capital city of Madison? The higher court in Miller observed that: “People in different States vary in their tastes and attitudes . ...” 8 As obviously, so do the average persons in the various counties or communities of this state. To adopt the community standard of the area from which the jury is drawn would be to recognize it as unreasonable to expect that a uniform statewide standard could be articulated for all counties or communities in the state in a single formulation, in part because the “prerequisite consensus” does not exist.
(2) The attempt to locate and apply a single statewide standard as to what average persons consider prurient or patently offensive can end up only with an approximation as to some median or halfway point between the most permissive and the least permissive com*583munity in the state. In Miller, the high court firmly stated, “. . . When triers of fact are asked to decide whether ‘the average person, applying contemporary community standards’ would consider certain materials ‘prurient,’ it would be unrealistic to require that the answer be based on some abstract formulation. ...” 9 That is exactly what is asked of juries when they are asked to locate and apply a statewide standard. In Miller, the high court held a national standard as to what average persons consider prurient and offensive to be both “hypothetical and unascertainable.” 10 As hypothetical and as unascertainable is a statewide community standard in this state. To start a search for a midway point between the various community standards in this state appears to the writer to be as difficult and unrewarding as has been the effort to structure obscenity proceedings around evidence of an equally hypothetical and unascertainable national standard.11
(3) The use of local community standards is inbuilt in the mandated test of an “average person, applying contemporary community standards.” In Miller, in making clear where the trier of fact is to look for guidance in applying such “average person” test, the court stated: “. . . The adversary system, with lay jurors as the usual ultimate factfinders in criminal prosecutions, has historically permitted triers of fact to draw on the standards of their community, guided always by limiting instructions on the law. . . .” 12 (Emphasis supplied.) *584Like the jurors themselves, the average person at the community level knows and has helped to formulate the standards of the community in which he lives. However, it is not realistic to expect such juror or average person in one Wisconsin community to know much about contemporary standards in a community at the other end of the state or much about what average persons in all communities in the state consider obscene. The geographical areas from which juries are drawn vary greatly in size, economic base and cultural life-styles. No juror needs help in determining and applying the standards of the average persons whom he meets daily, but there is no way for each juror to visit barbershops, beauty parlors, stores and shopping centers in other communities to determine what average persons there consider prurient or offensive. In Miller, the high court informs us that, . . In resolving the inevitably sensitive questions of fact and law, we must continue to rely on the jury system . . . 13 The writer submits that we can do that most effectively by using for the “average persons” test the contemporary community standards of the geographical area from which a jury in an obscenity case has been drawn or selected.
The -writer joins the court majority in the case before us in upholding the conviction of the defendant, following a trial in which the statewide community standard was used. As to future prosecutions in obscenity cases, the writer would find the language of Miller as permitting and the logic of Miller as strongly suggesting the applicability of local community standards, and would adopt the geographical area from which a jury was drawn as the basis for determining whether the “average person, applying contemporary community standards,” would find that the work or materials, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest.

 Miller v. California (1973), 413 U. S. 15, 93 Sup. Ct. 2607, 37 L. Ed. 2d 419.

 Id. at page 22, the United States Supreme Court (majority-opinion) noting: “Apart from the initial formulation in the Both case, no majority of the Court has at any given time been able to agree on a standard to determine what constitutes obscene, pornographic material subject to regulation under the State’s police power. . . .”

 Id. at pages 31, 32.

 Id. at pages 21, 24, 30, 33 and 37.

 Id. at pages 31, 33.

 Id. at page 24, the United States Supreme Court holding: “The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether ‘the average person, applying contemporary community standards’ would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest [cases cited]; (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. . . .” (Emphasis supplied.)

 Id. at page 30.

 Id. at page 33.

 Id. at page 30.

 Id. at page 31, the United States Supreme Court (majority opinion) stating: “. . . Nothing in the First Amendment requires that a jury must consider hypothetical and unascertainable ‘national standards’ when attempting to determine whether certain materials are obscene as a matter of fact. . . .”

 Id. at page 30, the United States Supreme Court (majority opinion) stating: “. . . To require a State to structure obscenity proceedings around evidence of a national ‘community standard’ would be an exercise in futility.”

 Id. at page 30.

 Id. at page 26.