Court Opinion

ID: 9537692
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:21:29.799479+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:56:53.962000
License: Public Domain

ZIMMERMAN, Justice,
concurring and dissenting:
I join in the majority’s statement of the law and its analysis of the depictions at issue here. Turner’s conviction cannot stand. However, I dissent from the affir-mance of the court of appeals judgment that the St. George ordinance is constitutional to the extent that it provides, in section le, that the definition of “sexual conduct” includes “any explicit close-up representation of a human genital organ or a spread eagle exposure of female genital organs.” This clause I would strike down.
It is true that we usually endeavor to construe statutes as constitutional. Here, the court does this by reading section le of the ordinance as requiring that the “representation” be of “conduct,” as that term is constitutionally defined. While it is a close call, I conclude that the plain words of section le simply do not admit of that interpretation. The section applies to “any” explicit close-up, not only to those that depict sexual conduct.
Given the somewhat farfetched nature of the prosecution here, which suggests something less than a fine sensitivity to First Amendment values, I think it would be more helpful for those who drafted the St. George ordinance and those charged with enforcing it to tell them plainly that the ordinance is unconstitutional to the extent that it attempts to' reach “any” depictions *937elaborated in section le. The majority does that, .but only in a way that may require further litigation before the message gets through.
DURHAM, J., concurs in the concurring and dissenting opinion of ZIMMERMAN, J.