Court Opinion

ID: 9583099
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:34:47.284717+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:37:13.833706
License: Public Domain

Justice EXUM
dissenting:
I dissent for the reasons given in my dissent to the Court’s first opinion, 296 N.C. 251, 268, 250 S.E. 2d 603, 613 (1978), a position which I believe has been bolstered by Vance v. Universal Amusement Co., 445 U.S. 308 (1980), and Spokane Arcades, Inc. v. Brackett, _F. 2d_, No. 78-2369, slipop. (9th Cir. 1980). Both Vance and Spokane Arcades struck down state statutes which permitted injunctions against future “obscene” expressions. As construed by the majority in this Court’s first opinion, a construction with which I then disagreed, our statute under attack permits precisely this kind of injunction.
The argument of the majority initially and in its second opinion is the same: An injunction against future “obscene” expressions has no greater chilling effect on protected expressions than criminal sanctions against “obscene” expressions which have been approved by the United States Supreme Court. As I noted in my original dissent, I thought that Court answered such an argument in Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931). If not, it clearly answered it in Vance when it said, 445 U.S. 315-16, “the burden of supporting an injunction against a future exhibition is even heavier than the burden of justifying the imposition of a criminal sanction for a past communication.”
The majority relies on finely spun distinctions between the injunction dealt with in Vance and the one here being considered. *331Perhaps these distinctions are sufficient to make a difference. I do not think so, because I read Vance more broadly than the majority chooses to.
Vance says that injunctions against future expressions are intrinsically different from criminal sanctions against past expressions. One reason given in Vance is that non-obscenity might not be a defense against a contempt proceeding for violation of a civil injunction. In other words, a defendant may engage in expression that violates the terms of the injunction but which is not in fact obscene. The dissenters in Vance noted, “[tjhis conclusion is plainly wrong.” 445 U.S. at 322. The majority here says that non-obscenity is always a defense against a contempt proceeding under our civil injunction statute because the injunction can apply only to materials which, by definition, are obscene.
Even if the dissenters in Vance and the majority here are correct on this point, this is not the only reason why injunctions against future expression are more onerous in light of the First Amendment than criminal sanctions against past expressions. First, as I noted in my original dissent, a criminal defendant is entitled to various procedural protections, e.g., a jury trial, not available to an alleged civil contemner. Second, the state in a criminal obscenity prosecution is constitutionally required to prove not only that the particular material in question is obscene but that defendant knew of its obscenity at the time he dealt with it. Ginsberg v. Neir York, 390 U.S. 629(1968); Smith v. California, 361 U.S. 147 (1959). “The Constitution requires proof of scienter to avoid the hazard of self-censorship of constitutionally protected material and to compensate for the ambiguities inherent in the definition of obscenity.” Mishkin v. New York, 383 U.S. 502, 511 (1966). No such proof of scienter, or mens rea, would be required in a civil contempt proceeding. The state as plaintiff would be required to prove only that defendant wilfully engaged in expressions prohibited by the injunction.